Ian Wright: Aaron Ramsey Wasn’t Appreciated At Arsenal

Ian Wright is sad to see Aaron Ramsey leave the club…

Arsenal legend Ian Wright has stated that Aaron Ramsey wasn’t appreciated at the club and has slammed the way his contractual situation was handled by the hierarchy, he said on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Ramsey announced on Monday that he will indeed join Juventus on a free transfer once his contract expires in June, ending an 11-year stay at Arsenal.

Despite scoring a number of important goals throughout his Gunners career and that work rate was never called into question, it was rather odd to see Unai Emery completely shift his stance on Ramsey’s role at the club.

The Spaniard made it clear last summer that the Welshman was an integral part of his plans which invariably meant that he wasn’t sold after failing to agree to a contract before the window’s closure.

However, after starting regularly in our opening league games, Ramsey has been a peripheral member of the squad in recent months with Emery option to start the likes of Alex Iwobi and Henrikh Mkhitaryan ahead of him.

For Wrighty, the fact that he’s going for free almost makes his departure even more unbearable, and the former Arsenal striker blames the club’s board for that.

“Ramsey is just another player who got into a situation where he could run the contract down and when you consider the contracts that have been given out to Aaron Ramsey, they just couldn’t afford to keep Aaron Ramsey to keep him alongside the players they’ve got with the contracts that they’re on,” our former record goalscorer said as he echoed fans’ sentiment about the board’s player retention capabilities.

“Maybe he was never really appreciated at Arsenal,” Wright added.

“I think what people will see now is when you watch how he plays and the professionalism, he’s one of those players that, no matter how poorly Arsenal were playing, he never hid.

“Never hid, always showed for the ball, got loads of stick from loads of people but continued to try to make things happen in the way he sees fit and the way he plays football.

“The fact is we’re losing a great player.”

Check out his comments in the video below.