Originally Posted by
Master Splinter
Koscielny has been by far our best player, yes. Much like last season. He gets a run in the team and in most games he's virtually faultless. Forget the Gervinho/Walcott striker experiments, the Ramsey on the wings experiment, the lopsided midfield or the fact that horrendously out-of-form players seem to be rewarded with starts every week, Koscielny not being the first name on the team sheet was WengBOT's most costly mistake this season. There's been the usual WUMger smokescreen about him apparently having niggling injuries, but every player who is out of the team always seems to develop these. And even if he was, Wenget has had no problems playing certain others if they're carrying a little ankle/knee/shoulder. Nearly everyone here pointed out that Vermaelen's captaincy would be a hindrance, but I suppose a stubborn BOT is gonna BOT until even his stats machine points out to him that he's made a mistake.
Regarding Ramsey, you could apply many of those criticisms to most our players. As talented as Cazorla is, his application of it has been woeful recently and he makes more suicidal passes than Ramsey at times. Arteta has made too many mistakes lately for someone who is usually reliable. Sagna, Wilshere, Podolski and Vermaelem have all regressed for varying reasons. Monreal is not wholly convincing so far. Giroud and Walcott are mostly blunt, ragged, instruments of rare destruction. Gervinho is Gervinho. When you have a team made up of almost-men, journeymen and never-men, you get what we have now. To constantly criticise an individual who has mostly eradicated his early season foibles and has become a prime component of a more defensively solid team comes across as needlessly petty and obsessive. Yes, he's average at best. But so are most of our squad. At least Ramsey has contributed positively to results, while more talented offensive players have gone missing. It's not pretty watching Arsenal anymore, but to continually single out Ramsey is ridiculous. Blame the person who selects him and has brought us to this situation where we're mostly relying on wholesale water-carrying to get results.
