El Genio de Oviedo wrote:
Not sure the system's to blame for Ramsey looking poor against United; he also primarily stayed back with Coquelin against Barca and he was one of our better players on the day.
He's simply technically inconsistent, and that's my mauin reluctance with him. For every sublime piece of skill he pulls off, he makes a rather simple error- sometimes in the same sequence.
I'm just not sure he fills the first requirement of a class midfielder in the modern game, which is to put his foot on the ball and control the game, a la Scholes, Xavi, Pirlo. If he's going to be a variant of Lampard/Scholes, that's a seperate discussion and frankly I don't know if he can be accommodated with Ozil at his current position if that's the case
When every player on the pitch is suffering the same issue, I call it a systematic breakdown. That's not to excuse frankly poor decision making on each player's part.
How many times did Gabriel get on the ball with nobody to pass to? Bellerin? Coquelin? I'm not going to look it up, but I would wager that we played backwards more often than any other time this season and especially backwards all the way to cech. And this was while we were losing.
