IS A RAMSEY/WILSHERE PARTNERSHIP WHAT’S BEST FOR THE CLUB?

This week’s post is inspired in part by comments made by Aaron Ramsey last week in an interview with RWD Magazine where he was quizzed on the potential of partnering with Jack Wilshere in Arsenal’s midfield.

“I’ve been injured, and then he’s been injured, and then I’ve been injured, so we haven’t had that real chance of playing with each other and showing what we are capable of doing together. Definitely when we’re on the pitch together we’re on the same wavelength.”

I’ll be honest; this is not a question I’ve ever looked forward to tackling. I mean, I know there was a lot of talk about Ramsey and Wilshere being the future of Arsenal’s midfield ever since they made their respective debuts, but back then I thought it was too soon to tell. The two made their first-team bows exactly a month apart (Ramsey-13^th August 2008, Wilshere-13^th September 2008), but have only started 50 games together in the nearly-seven years since. This, as Ramsey indicated, is largely down to injury spells between the two players, but even then you can probably count the number of games that the pair started as a duo in the heart of midfield. Or let’s take a look at this pre-season so far, where both players have been fit but have yet to be paired in midfield…Wilshere has started on the right twice, so perhaps Arsene Wenger is yet to warm up to that idea of a Ramsey/Wilshere partnership. But I’ve been doing a bit of digging on this, so let’s take a deeper look at this.

First off, a Ramsey/Wilshere partnership is not entirely conventional. Look at it this way: the league’s top teams last season all favoured a more-orthodox midfield partnership of a DM and a sort-of box-to-box midfielder (Matic and Fabregas for Chelsea, Fernando/Fernandinho and Yaya Toure for City, Carrick and Herrera/Fellaini/Rooney for United and Santi Cazorla and Francis Coquelin ourselves). Neither Wilshere nor Ramsey is really renowned for their defensive prowess at the moment. Wilshere is an excellent dribbler; he carries the ball from deep with both drive and flair, while Ramsey’s late runs into the box and outrageous finishing ability yielded 16 goals in 32 appearances in 2013/2014. But, as some would say, a few seasons back we did have a midfield partnership featuring Mikel Arteta and Alex Song, who operated as a double pivot in the middle. Neither really played as an out-and-out DM, and posted perhaps respectable averages in terms of defensive stats (Song averaged 2.1 tackles and 2.1 interceptions per game, Arteta averaged 2.5 tackles and 1.9 interceptions per game). But the pair were a great asset for the club going forward, and here memories of Song’s lofted through balls for Robin van Persie come to mind. He ended the season with one goal and 11 assists, while Arteta scored six goals and provided two assists. Coquelin, last season, had zero goals and zero assists. So perhaps a Ramsey/Wilshere partnership would be more productive in this regard?

I also took a look at a few defensive stats from Wilshere and Ramsey from last season, and as a means of comparison, will contrast those with Arteta in 2012/2013 and Coquelin in 2014/2015.

	Tackles won (%)	Interceptions (per game)	Aerial Duels won (%)
Arteta (2012/2013)	52%	2.9	52%
Ramsey (2014/2015)	31%	1.1	46%
Wilshere (2014/2015)	33%	0.4	25%
Coquelin (2014/2015)	49%	3.6	64%

So not looking too great there for either Ramsey or Wilshere. However we do have to be cognizant of the fact that Wilshere and Ramsey’s roles have changed somewhat over the years. Remember when Ramsey was largely thought of as a liability in the team while playing on the right, and then he moved back to the base of midfield and went “back to the basics”? He was posting averages of 90%+ passing accuracy per game, over 100 passes per game and looking pretty solid. Fast-forward two seasons and Ramsey was scoring 16 goals a season, which shows you how his role in the team has morphed over time. In 2012/2013, Ramsey averaged 1.8 tackles and 1.2 intercepts per game, and had a 62% success rate on tackles as compared to 31% last season. Wilshere on the other hand averaged 1.1 tackles and 1 intercept per game, and a 53% success rate for both tackles won and aerial duels won, which is a step-up from his figures last season. Wilshere has also been used as the deepest-lying midfielder for the England national team and earned rave reviews then. Therefore, a Ramsey/Wilshere partnership while being unconventional, might still work out. Will we see this partnership this season? I think that’s highly unlikely. Coquelin has become indispensable in the current squad, while there’s Cazorla, Arteta and Mathieu Flamini to think about as well before we begin to consider partnering Ramsey and Wilshere there. 

After the 4-0 win over Singapore Select XI a couple of weeks back Arsene was quizzed as to where Wilshere will feature in the team:

“Already in the last two or three games of the season he has found his burst back with acceleration. Like with Alex Oxlade Chamberlain, that’s a big part of their game…For me he can play in all the offensive positions-wide and central. I have so many good and creative players. If you ask all of them where they want to play, they will always tell you central. Unfortunately some of them have to go wide as well.”

There you have it. The question of whether a Ramsey/Wilshere partnership can work is, to borrow a phrase, a “non-issue” for now. In the future, I’m sure this will come up again. Can it work? Yes. Would I advise it? I don’t think so. For anyone interested by the way, in 2011/2012 with that Song/Arteta double-pivot we conceded 49 league goals. Last season, we conceded 36, and only 14 in the 20 matches that Coquelin started.

OF INTEREST THIS WEEK:

Now I deliberately delayed last week’s post till now just so I can say that we’ve now won two trophies in my last two blog posts (smiles), following the club’s fourth Emirates Cup triumph on Sunday. Petr Cech has also won two trophies in his first two games for the club, so Petr and I are on for a hat-trick this Sunday when we play for the Community Shield. Giroud, Oxlade, Iwobi, Ramsey, Ozil and Cazorla all got on the score-sheet as we kicked things off with a 6-0 rout of Olympique Lyon, which we then followed up with a 1-0 win over Wolfsburg to clinch the cup. I liked the fact that all seven goals we scored in the tournament were scored by seven different players, and I certainly hope that this will be the trend this season. Last season, only Alexis (25), Giroud (19) and Ramsey (10) managed to get into double figures in terms of goals scored in all competitions. In fact; Danny, Theo, Santi, Oxlade and Ozil only scored 31 goals in all competitions between them. Wenger, when speaking to press ahead of the Emirates Cup last weekend, did allude to the fact that we need to look for more goals from within the current squad before we bring in more goals in the form of another striker.

“Our target is to improve the number of goals…we want to combine defensive efficiency with ten more goals. In the second part of the season we only conceded 13 goals in 19 games. So we want to keep that and add a few more goals. I think we can find that from inside, I am convinced of that. If we can find it from outside then we will do it as well.”

In other news, Wojciech Szczesny looks set to leave the club on a season-long loan to Italian side AS Roma. Wenger did, however, insist that the Pole still has a future with the Gunners.

“I believe he will have a future at Arsenal because I rate him highly. I don’t want the opportunity he had at a young age to be wasted.”

The acquisition of Petr Cech earlier in the summer of course necessitated a move away from the club for either Szczesny or Ospina, so this comes as no surprise. I just hope he comes back though.

I leave you with this interesting stat I picked up from whoscored.com:

“Arsenal conceded the fewest goals from outside the box in the Premier League this season, with 3.”