7 Reasons Aaron Ramsey's Injury Crippled Arsenal's Season

6. €œWell Now, He's Running As If The Devil Himself Were Behind Him.€

When Aaron Ramsey and/or Jack Wilshere don't play, Arsenal's midfield becomes extremely unbalanced. You have Arteta and Flamini camped behind the halfway line and any mixture of –zil, Cazorla, Podolski and Rosicky tracking far deeper than they should be to continue to receive the ball via Arsené's preferred short, grounded passing method. What this does is invites the opposition forward, drastically stunts our attacking potency and pulls our best attacking players out of position. Without Ramsey or Wilshere, there is nobody in that midfield capable of progressing play from defence to attack with any real intent or purpose. Arteta and Flamini don't have the speed, nor stamina to cover such ground. Arsené eventually tried Oxlade-Chamberlain in that role to in an emergency attempt to remedy this problem but the Ox is an attacking spearhead, not an archer. A few more quick numbers for ya, may the lord praise Shaka Hislop! From the Hull game: - Ramsey completed 67 overall passes in the match, second only behind Arteta. - Of those 67, 25 of them occurred in the attacking final third- the highest in the team, more than Podolski, –zil and Cazorla, all whom were playing higher than him in the formation. - Despite that, 10 times during the game Ramsey was credited with a ball recovery, regaining possession for the Gunners. Simply put, nobody in our squad is as capable of covering the midfield like Ramsey does. Attack and defence, his influence is felt in both. For the balance to be right, Arsenal need that progressive covering from box-to-box. Ramsey is proving to become quite the master at it.