Nick Ware

Fri 26 March 2021 13:55, UK

Aaron Ramsey is yesterday’s news and the Wales international should be avoided at all costs by West Ham this summer.

The ex-Arsenal midfielder was a huge Premier League success before he made the move to Italy and linked up with Cristiano Ronaldo at Juventus in 2019.

According to Italian outlet Calcio Mercato West Ham are readying an offer for Ramsey and will be “attractive candidates” if they qualify for Europe.

But at West Ham Zone we think this would be a bad move and an unnecessary one at that as we already have our box-to-box midfielder goalscorer in Tomas Soucek.

As you can see below from their heatmaps [via Wyscout] this season both Soucek and Ramsey prefer to operate in the final third of the pitch, though Soucek puts a much bigger shift in the middle third.

Ramsey tends to prefer drifting to the left more while Soucek tends to line up on the right hand side of the Irons midfield next to Declan Rice.

 Tomas Soucek      Aaron Ramsey

They both enjoy breaking through midfield to fashion goalscoring opportunities for themselves and there is a clear similarity between their most recent goals.

First is Soucek’s hat-trick clincher for Czech Republic against Estonia on Wednesday.

Here he barrages his way through the middle of the Estonia defence, parting them like the red sea, before receiving the ball from his teammate for a simple tap-in to an empty net.

Ramsey’s last goal was way back in January 30 v Sampdoria but it’s worth noting how similar it is to Soucek’s.

He makes a run from deeper but they end up in the same scenario – with the ball played across the box for an open goal.

That in a nutshell is what both players are about.

They can both do the spectacular as they have shown on occasion with fizzing efforts that fly into the top corner but their general play is usually kept simple and that is what has made them both such great players.

In this West Ham side there are already the mercurial talents of Said Benrahma alongside Pablo Fornals, Manuel Lanzini and Jarrod Bowen, et al. The Irons don’t need another one in this mould from midfield.

Instead Soucek does what it says on the tin – gets up, gets down, causes a nuisance in the air and sticks the ball in the back of the net.

Ramsey has some of those qualities but he is severely lacking in a couple of departments, namely aerial prowess and defensive contribution.

According to Wyscout he is involved in 1.56 aerial duels and 4.57 recoveries per 90.

Soucek, meanwhile, is involved in 9.57 aerial duels and recovers the ball 9.9 times per 90.

So the Czech international is a much bigger presence than Ramsey defensively and in the air while his 42.9% shot accuracy is also better than the 30-year-old’s 39.5%.

With nine club goals compared to Ramsey’s two, before even going onto international strikes, Soucek far outweighs Ramsey for attacking output.

With Ramsey reportedly on £400,000 a week at Juventus [BBC Sport] we cannot fathom a world where this makes sense.

He is not better than our existing midfielders Soucek and Rice while shoving an ageing player into the side with such lavish wages would be farcical.

This is one West Ham must avoid and we should learn from our mistakes of the past, notably the Jack Wilshere example where we signed a washed-up Arsenal outcast.

Ramsey may be a notch above that but the move still makes no sense.

In other West Ham news, see part four of our exclusive interview with The Athletic’s Irons reporter Roshane Thomas.