It's not disingenuous, it's a simple fact that we withdrew the offer. I don't care what Raul says; I don't expect him to hold his hands up and admit that he fucked us over.

Whatever will be will be

No money no champions league

Que sera sera

Not extending Ramsey is one of the few good things the club has done this season. We'd be looking at another Özil situation with the added bonus of hoping it'll be one big injury keeping him out instead of two small ones so the insurance money kicks in.

jones wrote:

Not extending Ramsey is one of the few good things the club has done this season. We'd be looking at another Özil situation with the added bonus of hoping it'll be one big injury keeping him out instead of two small ones so the insurance money kicks in.

yessir

Agreed. Imagine having 550,000+ pounds/week of injuries and semi-retirement to deal with. That’s straight up negligence.
I love Ramsey but part of the risk of having him in the team is that when we needed a player like him most in the squad in the last 5 weeks, he wasn’t there. I’d rather that 550,000 pounds was put towards players who can execute Emery’s system well regularly.

i have no complaint with the ramsey decision. i think if emery had a choice of who to renew between ozil and rambo, he'd take rambo every day. unfortunately he arrived too late to have a say in it

And who would Wenger have prioritized?

jones wrote:

Not extending Ramsey is one of the few good things the club has done this season. We'd be looking at another Özil situation with the added bonus of hoping it'll be one big injury keeping him out instead of two small ones so the insurance money kicks in.

I think his season ending injury during the run home perhaps underlined this.

By the end of this summer, the only big contract left should be Aubameyang’s. Hard to argue with a golden boot. We need to move to a place where scrubs like Kola aren’t eating like Kong’s at Arsenal.

Klaus wrote:
Anzac wrote:

The new style under Emery is essentially more workman like, and there is a very real danger that without a ability to sign players with both work rate and technical ability, that we'll simply become little more than functional in our play.

I think that's well summed up, yes. Then there's the consideration that players with technique AND workrate are as rare as top-end strikers. It looks like a good idea on paper - a couple of midfielders with great skill and technique who can run all day sounds great! - until you look at the actual market and realise that your target is Marco Verratti, and good luck with getting him.

If this is our plan then we did great damage to ourselves before the transfer window even opened too. Ramsey was a great compromise between skills and workrate who scored high in both columns, and we rescinded the contract offer and let him go for free.

This is where team balance comes into it.

So far as replacing Rambo goes Bennacer looked to have plenty of energy and willingness from the little I've seen, and he also showed some technical ability.  Don't know about many of the other CMs we've been linked to.

Anzac wrote:
jones wrote:

Not extending Ramsey is one of the few good things the club has done this season. We'd be looking at another Özil situation with the added bonus of hoping it'll be one big injury keeping him out instead of two small ones so the insurance money kicks in.

I think his season ending injury during the run home perhaps underlined this.

I'm amused by this line of arguing. He's so vital that we can't win against Brighton and Crystal Palace without him, so therefore we might as well let him go for free? Would it have been better if he had been injured during the months when Emery didn't play him perhaps?

The problem with Ramsey this season wasn't that he got untimely injured towards the end. It was that we didn't properly use him for a long time. If we had we'd been in Champions League right now, without having to bank on winning the European league cup to get in.

Anzac wrote:

This is where team balance comes into it.

So far as replacing Rambo goes Bennacer looked to have plenty of energy and willingness from the little I've seen, and he also showed some technical ability. Don't know about many of the other CMs we've been linked to.

Yes, but Bennacer is 21. He has a whooping one season of Serie A experience, doesn't score goals and barely assist them, and he generally plays deeper, like a mix between Xhaka and Torreira. He creates chances and has a lot of drive in his game, but he's a youth project. Ramsey is a readymade player you could throw on against Real Madrid and feel comfortable that he'd perform well.

If you want a like for like replacement for Ramsey from Serie A you'd be looking at a bloke like Milinkovic-Savic who costs £80-100 million. That's the sort of capital we just gave up for free. No wonder Juve were interested. Everyone's looking for industrious top-end midfielders and we give one up because it fits some absurd logic about saving money. Screw performance levels, if you get injured with six weeks left of the season you don't deserve a decent wage? How much is it going to cost us to find a replacement on a similar level now?

Well Milinkovic is a lot younger. We wouldn't have got anywhere near £80-100m for Ramsey in any market. Juve can afford to pay him the insane salary he was demanding hence he went there and they were willing because he is free and can afford it. Not much more to it.

He is not being paid an insane salary at Juve. They have a smaller wage bill than we do. The numbers Ornstein (and no one else) reported would make Ramsey the highest paid player in the world not named Messi and Ronaldo. He'd earn more than anyone at Real Madrid, PSG and City. If you believe that then I've got a bridge to sell you.

Mininkovic-Savic is younger, but also flakier like this season showed. Ramsey's value is not just about what someone would pay for him, it's also about how much he'd cost to replace.

Even without the amount Ornstein is saying he is still on an insane salary after tax and signing on fee, they may have a smaller wage bill but they're capable of paying individuals more, they're paying Ronaldo something like £550k per week, whereas we can't even sign players due to our wage bill.

Rabiot would be a good replacement and is free. And we don't even have to replace him, there are plenty of central midfielders around who are young with potential, and I'd rather we go for someone who's value will rise and potentially be worth £80-100m in the market in the future.

Klaus wrote:

He is not being paid an insane salary at Juve. They have a smaller wage bill than we do. The numbers Ornstein (and no one else) reported would make Ramsey the highest paid player in the world not named Messi and Ronaldo. He'd earn more than anyone at Real Madrid, PSG and City. If you believe that then I've got a bridge to sell you.

Most of italian media mentioned those numbers as well. It's believable because that's what free transfers do to you. It's common. 

It's not. If it were common you'd see more players earning wages like that, not just Messi and Ronaldo. It's bullshit, plain and simple, and everyone can spot it from a mile away. Zlatan didn't have that high wages when he joined United for free. The only ones reporting it are the ones getting the numbers off Ornstein's tweet, which was rebuked by several other sources the same day he tweeted it.

Zlatan was 36 years old and had no resale value though. Ramsey is, as you said, a £50m player.

Whether you believe him or not is up to you, but Sanllehi said Ramsey had incredible offers from multiple clubs that Arsenal could not match. So that's from the horse's mouth.

And it's obviously true. The way it's panned out tallies.