I have been on popular Gunners blog "Gunners Town" this week, and did a piece on my thoughts on who should lead the line between Olivier Giroud and Theo Walcott... do have a read and have your say on the poll at the end of the article here.
Now onto the crux of this week's post... I remember in my match review in the aftermath of our reverse against West Ham I pointed out our poor distribution from the middle owing to the partnership of Aaron Ramsey and Francis Coquelin, none of whom are really renowned for their passing. Last season this problem was averted through partnering Coquelin and Santi Cazorla instead, with Ramsey having to make do with a role wide right when he came back from injury. Well, naturally, many more bloggers such as myself had their say on the matter and opinion is more or less divided. I've been doing a lot of reading, and I'll try including links to some of the best articles I've come across on this matter as I go along. They all make for great reading, and you'd do well to go through to get an understanding of the complexities that we face in finding a balance in our packed but diverse midfield.
First off, we all agree that something was seriously amiss in the middle against West Ham. I will try to summarize it thus: Without the technical protection/cover that Santi provided last season, Coquelin's deficiencies on the ball were left badly exposed when he was paired up with Ramsey instead. And as one of my mentors @goonerdave66 puts it here, many feel that the Coquelin/Cazorla axis which was so successful for us in the second half of last season should be our first-choice pairing in the middle of the park. And to be fair, it's hard to argue against it.It's right for the balance of the team, and the thought of having that Coquelin/Cazorla axis, Mesut Ozil playing ahead of them, Alexis Sanchez on the left and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain on the right looks brilliant in theory. However, following this train of thought, it means there is no place in the Starting XI for one Aaron Ramsey as it upsets the balance of the team and the set-up of our midfield. Some more reading from Jeorge Bird suggests that Ramsey faces the prospect of sitting out our trip to Selhurst Park on Sunday for this very reason.
All very valid points, really. But let's not forget that this is still the "Welsh Jesus" Aaron Ramsey who scored 16 goals in 32 appearances from this same deep-lying position in midfield in 2013/2014. The same Welshman who was the only player alongside Olivier Giroud and Sanchez to make double figures in terms of goals scored last season, injuries and all. In fact, this partnership between Coquelin and Ramsey that failed to make in-roads against West Ham was the same pairing that was so effective in shutting down Chelsea's power and creativity through the middle in the Community Shield two weeks back, as is explained by Adrian Clarke in "The Breakdown" here. And as Adrian Clarke continues to explain, Santi was deployed ostensibly from the left against Chelsea and he was still effective in an offensive sense, sparking the move that led to Oxlade-Chamberlain's excellent winner as well as completing the most passes in Chelsea's half. Not to say that this is Santi's best position, far from it, but this is the midfield set-up that functioned admirably against the league champions.
Tim Stillman offers more insight into the rather more complex nature of our current midfield components here, where he says:
"After a bad result, it’s tempting to throw the baby out with the bathwater and write combinations and partnerships off in perpetuity. I have written before about my suspicion that Coquelin and Ramsey as a central pairing doesn’t offer enough precision in possession. That said, Chamberlain’s goal against Chelsea at Wembley came as a direct result of some Santi trickery on the left and a beautiful decoy run by Aaron Ramsey from the centre. Adrian Clarke’s Community Shield Breakdown also illustrated that the combination of Ramsey and Coquelin (Ramelin?) gave Arsenal a needed base of power against a physical Chelsea midfield. So it’s not a partnership eternally doomed to dysfunction."
And lastly, Michael Keshani also writes about the limits of Coquelin and Cazorla in the middle, and argues a case for Ramsey playing in his preferred box-to-box role in the middle. He argues that an Arsenal side with an Cazorla/Coquelin axis will struggle to build play from the back as well as struggle to relieve pressure and play on the counter-attack without Ramsey's ability to carry the ball forward and make those late but impeccably-timed runs into the box to make something happen in that end. And I agree to a large extent, although it must be pointed out that we did score 39 goals in 20 games since Coquelin's first start last season (second behind Manchester City) and we garnered 45 points (three more than Chelsea) in those 20 games, so it's not like the Coquelin/Cazorla pairing makes our attack stunted in any way.
Let me make this a little more interesting by borrowing a thought from Arseblog, who quip that perhaps Mikel Arteta with his ability to dictate the pace and tempo of the game from deep through his passing would have been better starting against West Ham as compared to Coquelin. And I agree, there are many things that Coquelin is better than Arteta at: tackling, intercepting, and defending in general, but passing is not one of these things. And therefore when the situation does not call for a defensive player in the mould of Coquelin, as when we play against teams who park the bus and negate our need to defend, then Coquelin should not be thought of as the first name on the team-sheet.And when we come up against teams with more imagination, ambition and ability, then that situation demands the presence of Coquelin in the line-up.
This debate will rage on over the course of the season, but all I'm saying is that there will not be a "blanket solution" to this conundrum and we should debate about it with that in mind.
I will be looking ahead to Sunday's game against Crystal Palace later on today, so be on the look-out for that. Cheers!
So what's my take-away from all this reading? (And I do hope I have not lost you in the midst of all the external links). That Coquelin/Ramsey failed to catch the eye against West Ham is not in doubt. But, contrary to the somewhat popular opinion in the aftermath of that defeat, Aaron Ramsey is not the odd man out in the middle.In fact, when changes needed to be made, who was it who made way? That's right, Coquelin was brought off for Theo Walcott and Ramsey was paired with Santi after that. Does this mean that Coquelin was poor against West Ham? Certainly not. His distribution is not the best, I concede that, but judging him on this sole parameter would be akin to judging Mesut Ozil
based on the number of tackles he makes. Coquelin's skill set simply was no longer required given the situation we found, or rather, dug ourselves into after we gifted the Hammers two goals. Thus Coquelin was the odd man out on Sunday, and in future it will be Ramsey who finds himself in the cold too. In the end, my contribution to this debate is simply that there isn't and shouldn't be a "one-size-fits-all" solution to our midfield shenanigans. As has been demonstrated above, different situations call for different solutions (Ramsey/Coquelin against Chelsea, Ramsey/Cazorla against West Ham and Coquelin/Cazorla for most of last season). 
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