Quote Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn View Post
On the other hand, even Wenger subbed Ramsey off. And this isn't because Ramsey is an inferior player to this O'Hara guy, obviously that notion is pure bullshit but it sounds to me like that's not the argument that was being made. Surely the argument was that anyone would have been better than nobody in the midfield. And on Sunday we had nobody in the midfield. Ramsey and Xhaka were regularly abandoning their posts and exposing the defence. This allowed Liverpool to move the ball up the pitch in seconds and straight into the danger area. The really worrying aspect was not Ramsey's play, although that was worrying enough, but more the length of time it took Wenger to spot and correct the blatantly obvious problem. This feeds into the argument that it really doesn't matter much how good our players are because Wenger's tactics are so deficient. If O'Hara had been pubbing it out in our midfield and did little more than present a barrier to the advancing opposition, well perhaps he might have been more effective than Ramsey was, it's not an argument totally lacking in merit. I'd rather not have O'Hara in our midfield, of course. I'd rather have Ramsey there. Trouble is, Ramsey isn't there nearly enough. His performance was catastrophic on Sunday.
That argument makes sense. A central midfielder with half the talent should know that you can’t abandon your post like that.

This is what I don’t get about some of the players. Surely Ramsey knows that you can’t play that way as a midfielder. He can’t live in bubble. Regardless of Wenger’s tactics, he must know the very basics.

I was never a fan of Arteta but he arrived as a CM and more attack minded, not a defensive midfielder. From what I recall, it was Arteta that decided to play more reserved role and sit deep because he saw the need and how our players just bombed forward leaving us open. Wenger didn’t tell him to get forward, he embraced it and talked up Arteta’s defensive qualities and accepted that he was more of a DM. Even when Cazorla plays as a CM, he doesn’t bomb forward further than our damn strikers.

We have some selfish, brain dead players on the squad. Ramsey being one of them. But it doesn’t help when you have a manager that will help him indulge in his reckless play. It can’t just be down to the players to coach themselves, motivate themselves and organise themselves tactically. Not in today’s game and not when we have kids like Ramsey that have been taught the wrong way for far too long.