Mostly criticism of Ramsey comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of what a "free" roll is, as perpetuated by mainstream pundits, and most system managers. Its the same effect at ManU where they have shackled most of Pogba's best traits.
He's not good enough to build a system around and he doesn't fit into any of the slots that are currently being used on this team.
Because the manager isn't good enough to figure out what to do with him and too stubborn to let him go.
Which is why he should be let go, not sure why people don't get that. Again it's management and stubborness by Wenger He's not good enough? let him go. SImple
Disagree that he isn't good enough. He is good enough. It's that he doesn't fit in a midfield with Mesut Ozil. I agree that he should be sold (and think we should sign another ballplaying midfielder), but he's a very good player with a skillset that no one else has at Arsenal. The off the ball movement is fantastic, and he covers more range than anyone else at Arsenal. He just doesn't fit with the personnel we have right now. If someone wants to come up with a way to make Ramsey and Ozil fit together in a midfield, I'm all ears (remember seeing data showing that Ozil's key pass numbers dropped like crazy when he was moved to the left or the right).
We don't need any of his skills. We need midfielders that have positional awareness and are good passers. Ramsey isn't really those things.
I disagree that we don't need his skills. A lot of people say that but would then turn around and want a Hamsik or a Pogba or even a Vidal. These guys are stylistically very similar to Ramsey. We also need midfield scoring. I think he and Özil can play together, but I have no faith that Wenger will ever figure that out. You giving Wenger too much credit here. Iwobi does that, I'm not giving credit to Wenger for that based on what we have seen with other players.
i actually disagree. i think he could coexist very well with ozil, specifically for the very reason you mentioned - his off the ball movement. and we finally have the partner for him we need in xhaka. xhaka is a better partner for ramsey than cazorla because he is not as lightweight and more defensively proficient (where cazorla needs coquelin's robustness) but he can still cycle of the ball as well as making penetrative passes out of the back to get attacking moves going on his own and leave ramsey to just dump the ball off and run. as you said, ramsey's engine is insane and he has enough deceptive speed and athleticism to come back and help xhaka defensively because, as you pointed out, he is somewhat lacking in lateral movements. and, at his best, he arrives late from those runs to overload the box and would be an ideal target for ozil - and sanchez, actually, since we are sticking with him as the primary striker and he still insists on dropping deep constantly. in fact, i think xhaka-ramsey are about as ideal a pairing as we can get. the problem with ramsey is when he does not want to do the running and just wants to linger around the top of the box waiting for ball to feet.
I will continue to think that we're a better team with Elneny than Ramsey in CM. Ramsey is 25 and still hasn't made himself a starter.
i like elneny more than @mebeSajid but i'm having a tough time matching elneny with a partner based on who else we have on the squad at the moment (EXCEPT for end of game time killing where we run an extra central mid and take out an attacker). i feel like ramsey is a better partner for xhaka and coquelin is a better partner for cazorla and, for me, either cazorla or xhaka has to be on the pitch for our offense to be worth a damn. i think he's an intelligent offensive player (defensively, i think he needs to pick out better when and how much to chase) who is not static and i think, over time, he can get even better. he might not be all-world material but i think he can be a damn good contributor as a squaddie.
Both are slow and unathletic, Elneny has a tendency to ball watch and goes on walkabouts so often that you'd think he was a character on Lost. Elneny's positioning in the Liverpool and United games was flat out bad, and he was ball watching on Southampton's opener.
Here is what I want us all to do: 1) Admit that Ramsey isn't good enough/complimentary to the players we have that are undroppable 2) stop making up sh*t 3) stop pretending that just because he doesn't fit/isn't good enough that the other options are better 4) Coquelin and El Nenny are worse than Ramsey and are not better even when paired with the undroppable players. 5) In closing, stop lying to yourself just because you don't rate Ramsey
You can legitimately say you don't think Ramsey fits with the current team, you can criticize specific aspects of his game, but the argument that he is 25 and still hasn't made himself a starter is demonstrably false. In 8 years at Arsenal he has started more than 150 premier league and champions league games, most of them in the last 6 years. The number would almost certainly be higher, but he missed significant portions of individual seasons with his broken leg and various hamstring injuries.