A closer look: Aaron Ramsey « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

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By Walter Broeckx

As I have heard that Ramsey is the next victim of the AAA brigade I thought it would be an interesting thing to see how he is doing if we compare him with some other midfielders we have seen over the last years.

People who follow football a bit know that midfielders in general score more goals when they are in their best years. And for most midfielders this is the time when they reach the age of 22-23 until they are around 30 years old.

Now of course we should compare him with other players who play in a rather similar position. I could have taken Fabregas. But any player that you compare with Fabregas looks bad. As… well he was and is the best there is around. I also took other players who are more or less similar to Ramsey. A strong midfielder with a good physique and you can find him all over the field. So I thought that we maybe could compare him with players like Frank Lampard and I also included Paul Sholes. Two of the best English midfielders from the past 15 years one could say.

So went out on a search for the numbers of goals and assists and then I tried to see where we can place Aaron Ramsey at this point in his career. Because it is no use of comparing Ramsey who is just 21 with a player who is 24 or 28 or 37. No I took the numbers from the season in which they had more or less the same age. And this is what I found.

And I start with Ramsey himself.

age	games	goals	assists	total goals involved	goals/game involvement
17	22	2	3	5	0,23
18	22	1	3	4	0,18
19	29	4	3	7	0,24
20	19	2	1	3	0,16
21	29	2	7	9	0,31
TOT	121	11	17	28	0,23

Now the most important thing to know is that he in fact lost 1,5 year because of his terrible broken leg. Meaning also that after his return he did play some games but this season so far is his first one after that injury where he had a normal preseason.

And if we compare this with the earlier years you can see that his numbers are getting better this season.

If we take Paul Scholes we get these numbers. First of all I cannot find any numbers about Scholes before the age of 20. Maybe because he was only playing at reserve level or so? But we can see that the young Paul Scholes was having a better goal ratio than Aaron Ramsey had at 21 years old.

age	games	goals	assists	total goals involved	goals/game involvement
20	17	5	3	8	0,47
21	26	10	5	15	0,58
TOT	43	15	8	23	0,53

Let us move on to Frank Lampard.

age	games	goals	assists	total goals involved	goals/game involvement
18	10	1	0	1	0,10
19	16	0	0	0	0,00
20	42	10	0	10	0,24
21	41	6	0	6	0,15
TOT	109	17	0	17	0,16

And here we see that Ramsey has a better goal ratio than Frank Lampard had at his age.

Now we all can dislike Lampard and Scholes because they are from other teams but surely we cannot deny that in the EPL they are one of the best British midfielders that have been around.

And as far as I know neither of them ever suffered from a terrible injury when they were 19 years old like Ramsey did. And who was brave enough to recover from it.

So for all those out there who are criticising Ramsey I would like to ask them to just wait and see how he will develop in the next years. And therefore I included the same numbers from probably the best midfielder we have had Cesc Fabregas and his Arsenal career.

age	games	goals	assists	total goals involved	goals/game involvement
17	46	2	5	7	0,15
18	50	5	7	12	0,24
19	54	4	16	20	0,37
20	45	13	22	35	0,78
21	33	3	15	18	0,55
22	36	19	19	38	1,06
23	36	9	17	26	0,72
TOT	300	55	101	156	0,52

Now if you just look at the numbers you will see that Fabregas is from a different order. But if you take away 1,5 years of age from Ramsey you will see that his numbers are not that far away from Ramsey in fact.

Just compare Fabregas at 19 years old with Ramsey at 21 years old because of the lost time Ramsey had. There isn’t that much difference in it for the moment.

And then we should remember that Cesc= Cesc and Aaron=Aaron. They are different players with different skills. Goal scoring is also a skill that becomes better with age and with experience. Look at Cesc and look at Lampard his numbers. The older and more experienced you get the calmer you become in front of goal.

My conclusion is that Ramsey even with the terrible injury he had is now already double the player Lampard was. Scholes was ver consistent in his goal scoring and assists in his whole career but he started at a later age in the PL and so had not as much pressure on him when playing for the reserves in his younger days.

It all will depend on how much support Aaron gets not just from the manager but also from the fans. Because we gave Cesc our support when he was young and still learning his trade. Why don’t we just do the same with Aaron and give him the chance to become better?

Or do some of us really feel the need to hate their own players?