Starting "CM" next season - Ramsey vs Cazorla?: Page 8 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Starting "CM" next season - Ramsey vs Cazorla?

Klaus

Ramsey failing in the big games is absolute horseshit.

I think Santi's passing under pressure is underwhelming personally. It's one of the reasons Wenger stopped using him as the playmaker after half a season (and eventually decided to employ him deeper where there's more time and space). He struggled to cope in the final third where you get less time on the ball than anywhere else on the field. He got a bit found out in Champions League and against the top PL sides specifically.

Mirth

Gazza M wrote:
i'm not totally satisfied with any of our options at the base of midfield. we obviously have some top quality players, but the personnel doesn't quite marry up.

ram-caz is too light on defense

caz-coq means shifting ozil or rambo wide, and jack misses out

ram-coq is untested, and i've a feeling coq wouldn't do so well in this pairing

then you've got arteta in the mix as well, who's level is unknown at this point

I think there's a real possibility that we'll see Ramsey-Wilshere as well - the Weng has already tried it when we've been chasing games.

Qwiss

Definitely Mirth. I think we'll see those 2 together quite a bit this season.

y va marquer

flobaba wrote:
Cazorla gives us a cleverness, quickness and inventiveness in the midfield that no one else does. His range, and quality of passing is also the best and most consistent of all our central midfielders.

I don't see it as an easy decision at all. I think Cazorla will be allowed to continue to pull the strings in CM, with Ramsey shifted to the right for most part. Until one or the other gets injured /loses form or whatnot. Coquelin will retain his place as the "destroyer" as well, I believe.

Same way we played for most of last season.

I agree with every single line of that post.
Particularly the line that says that deciding as to who will play the central role out of Cazorla (in last season's form) and Ramsey is not easy.

Mirth

Klaus wrote:
Ramsey failing in the big games is absolute horseshit.

I think Santi's passing under pressure is underwhelming personally. It's one of the reasons Wenger stopped using him as the playmaker after half a season (and eventually decided to employ him deeper where there's more time and space). He struggled to cope in the final third where you get less time on the ball than anywhere else on the field. He got a bit found out in Champions League and against the top PL sides specifically.

Agreed - in truth, Ozil is the only player we have who's consistently able to evade that kind of pressure.

goon

y va marquer wrote:
flobaba wrote:
Cazorla gives us a cleverness, quickness and inventiveness in the midfield that no one else does. His range, and quality of passing is also the best and most consistent of all our central midfielders.

I don't see it as an easy decision at all. I think Cazorla will be allowed to continue to pull the strings in CM, with Ramsey shifted to the right for most part. Until one or the other gets injured /loses form or whatnot. Coquelin will retain his place as the "destroyer" as well, I believe.

Same way we played for most of last season.

I agree with every single line of that post.
Particularly the line that says that deciding as to who will play the central role out of Cazorla (in last season's form) and Ramsey is not easy.

Indeed. I think we've got two very talented players competing for that spot and while I have my preference, I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over which one of them plays in there.

Coombs

Cazorla and Ramsey are right next to each other, basically, each offering different attributes but both offering necessary attributes. Ramsey will never have Cazorla's feet. He'll make space for himself in other ways, though. Caz edges it for me, with Ramsey providing the competition. You just need the structured control of the midfield that Caz provides. Won't be long, though, before Ramsey is hands-down our option for CM. Down to experience/age, at the end of the day.

That being said, right side of a diamond does suit Ramsey pretty well. He plays the RW position more like that, imo.

JohnnyBravo

Since a lot of people claim that Cazorla is brilliant in the deeper role, the problem might lie with me on this one, but I just don't see it. I thought we were frustrating to watch more often than not this spring, mostly because Cazorla added next to nothing to our attack, while we at the same time had to live with a huge Santi-shaped hole in our midfield when we were defending. Maybe I'm just unable to appreciate what he does for us, but the way I see it, there's almost no chance at all of us winning the league next season if Ramsey doesn't start the vast majority of our games (as as CM).

Iloveyouarsenewenger

flobaba wrote:
Cazorla gives us a cleverness, quickness and inventiveness in the midfield that no one else does. His range, and quality of passing is also the best and most consistent of all our central midfielders.

I don't see it as an easy decision at all. I think Cazorla will be allowed to continue to pull the strings in CM, with Ramsey shifted to the right for most part. Until one or the other gets injured /loses form or whatnot. Coquelin will retain his place as the "destroyer" as well, I believe.

Same way we played for most of last season.

Great post!

Cazorla has given us a sense of calmness in midfield. On a lot of occasions, our other midfielders pass the ball back to defenders after failing to find any good alternatives when teams press our midfield. Cazorla, with his low centre of gravity, is quick to turn. Moreover, his genuinely good passing ability, awareness of others' positions and, most importantly, two-footedness help enable him to find good forward pass solutions in such circumstances.

At this point, he is rightly ahead of Ramsey as the deeper player.

Gazza M

cazorla is doing half the job of what a good pivot midfielder should be doing. yes he's superb technically and he's grown into the position, but he's just too small and doesn't cover enough ground defensively. also, i think he doesn't really set the tempo like a true deep midfielder - that may sound odd to alot of people, but to me he still looks like a displaced attacking mid playing in a deeper position.

ideally i want a player in there who can be a pivot, but has enough presence to allow ramsey to play next to him without losing too much defensively. in the meantime, cazorla in the deep role is probably the best option we have.

Rex

Javi Martinez 😃

DiabyKungFu

Johnny Bravo wrote:
Since a lot of people claim that Cazorla is brilliant in the deeper role, the problem might lie with me on this one, but I just don't see it. I thought we were frustrating to watch more often than not this spring, mostly because Cazorla added next to nothing to our attack, while we at the same time had to live with a huge Santi-shaped hole in our midfield when we were defending. Maybe I'm just unable to appreciate what he does for us, but the way I see it, there's almost no chance at all of us winning the league next season if Ramsey doesn't start the vast majority of our games (as as CM).

I'm mostly with you here. Cazorla went on an insane hot streak for about 10 weeks that seems like it might have disproportionately colored people's views but he was probably the least effective of any member of our first 11 starting from the Tottenham game going forward. He's a useful player who is good to have in the squad but that's pretty much the extent of things in my opinion and I say that as someone who thought that a lot of the views espoused about him during the 2013-14 season were way, way overly harsh.

Bold Tone

That much is true and part of the reason for that, i believe, is tactical.
Usually most teams try and force us to play through Mertesacker as his distribution is poor and Cazorla in the deep role threw a spanner into this tactic as he became our main outlet. pochettino saw what he did to man city and targeted him thereby neutralising our midfield. Wenger then countered this tactic by giving Ozil and Ramsey license to drop deep and offer support. Although this worked, it did not stop other teams from employing the same tactic as Ozil/Ramsey deeper is less potent to them as it isolates Giroud, uptop, making him less potent. The return of Walcott proved to be the answer as he had the pace to exploit the space created by the opposition pressing.

Mikelarts

Finally have access to the poll after signing up as a member!

Going into the new season, it is safe to say that Cazorla is our best CM to complement Coq given their success in the 2nd half of last season, and you don't fix what isn't broken. However given Ramsey's insane abilities and Wilshere's unquestionable talent, even Wenger would be tempted to experiment and tweak the pairing a little to accommodate their playing time and find the best pairing, possibly even at Coq's expense. We would be able to see more of these in the Emirates Cup.

The key is always to find the right balance and I trust Ramsey to win his place over the course of the season. I like Cazorla a lot, but he isn't getting any younger and I believe we have seen the best of Caz-Coq pairing last season. But until Ramsey or Wilshere can displace him I think it's still early days. They've got time on their side and I got a lot of time for the strongest area of our team.

One would have thought we would be all over Vidal given his price as opposed to Schneiderlin who we are, if sources are to be believed, remotely interested in until the Mancs came in with crazy money. Something must have put Wenger off Vidal and I don't think it's the crash incident.

Either he is preparing to look for a cheaper DM to back Coq up and save his budget for some bigger transfers (very unlikely), or he have seen something with our existing options that we don't know.

But of course he also sees things in the likes of Gervinho and Sanogo which we all don't know either. So who knows he might be seeing things with Arteta and Flams....

Anzac

IMO the questions are what style, shape & roles do we want to play & then what players do we have or need, and how ruthless is AW prepared to be and/or is he prepared to compromise his ideals to accommodate the resources he has?
Previously he's shown he is more likely to retain both his preferred style AND look to play/fit as many of his preferred ball players regardless of suitability, as seen with the 4141 debacle for the first half of last season with the 4 behind the CF playing as attacking AMs around the opposition area.

Nela

As much as I like Arteta and think he's an important leader in the squad, I think we need to bring in a Coquelin alternative. Arteta just slows us down too much and lacks ball winning ability.

Rohit

I agree. We need another body in midfield. Arteta is too unreliable and although Chamberlain and Wilshere can always substitute I would rather we don't shift players around like this.

Ray

Yeah, we need someone with rapid pace in central midfield who can cover a lot of ground.

Clrnc

Nela wrote:
As much as I like Arteta and think he's an important leader in the squad, I think we need to bring in a Coquelin alternative. Arteta just slows us down too much and lacks ball winning ability.

I would give him the benefit of doubt since he's been out for 9 months now, but I was honestly also surprised by the difference in quality from yesterday to today, Coquelin to Arteta. Coq is just so much better fit for us in many aspects of our game now.

Mirth

I think we can get away with Arteta-Ramsey or Cazorla-Coquelin. But Arteta-Cazorla will
be a disaster

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