Aaron Ramsdale says he’s enjoying the opportunity to compete with Bernd Leno to be Mikel Arteta’s first-choice stopper.
Signed last month from Sheffield United for £24 million, the 23-year-old already has two clean sheets to his name after starting between the sticks against West Brom in the Carabao Cup and Norwich in the Premier League.
While he’s not sure if he’ll continue to get the nod over his German teammate, Ramsdale insists he’s ready to step in whenever asked.
“I don’t know what the manager is going to do,” said the 23-year-old.
“This [game against Norwich] might have just been a tactical tweak, so it is my responsibility to force him to carry on picking me, which is something I have to do on a daily basis.
“Me and Bernd will be very competitive in a good way, healthy and hopefully I can stay in the team.
“You have got to be ready to play as a goalkeeper. You don’t know when anything is going to happen. I’m ready every week.
“So now we have got to continue the competitiveness on the training ground and I’ve got to try and stay in the team and help them. There is a lot to carry on going and we will see where it takes us this season.”
While we don’t know for sure, we suspect that Arsenal have already activated a clause in Leno’s contract that extends his deal to the summer of 2023. In taking the decision – which buys us an extra window to extract money from a sale – we’re assuming the German’s camp made it clear he has no intention of committing for longer. With that in mind, it looks increasingly likely that Arteta will give Ramsdale the time he needs to fully assert himself in his new surroundings.
Right now, it’s the new boy’s job to lose.
Humble pie, I thought he would be a waste of money. He’s looks to be our rough diamond!
I did read some awful stuff about him at the time too, but the Arsecast with the Sheffield guy gave me confidence. And it does indeed look he was right.
One game. He looked good. But Norwich rarely threatened. Might be better to review after a dozen or so games, home and away.
No! He’s either shite or amazing now!
Decide!
Haha
😁
But… I struggle under pressure…Can I say I am cautiously optimistic? 😁
That brought back memories of Banzai!.
Bet now!
I think Leno’s camp made it clear he wanted out and then back tracked when no other club registered an interest.
Rambo is the new number one.
This is another example of Arsenal and the fans overrating one of our players. Leno is a solid to good player, but he’s not close to being a top class goalie. I’d be surprised if we managed to sell him for more than we bought him for. Ramsdale has a way higher ceiling than Leno and he might already be as good anyway. The levels of communication and command and distribution he has shown are far superior from what we have seen from Leno in 2020/21 and now 2021/22. Really like the look of what we have in Ramsdale. He’s… Read more »
Absolutely agree.
I like Leno and he has got us out of some shit situations. He was also one of our most reliable performers during some tough times.
But there is no room for sentiment. As ruthless as it seems, Leno is the past.
I know it’s kind of unavoidable and you can’t play someone just to keep their price tag up.
But just watch us tank another players value.
If Leno continues to get benched, we’ll be selling for £10m max come the summer.
The answer to this is better recruitment – if you buy players that don’t turn into arguments about then being good or not so good and instead we’re all just drooling about how good they are then they always maintain value. We need more Tierneys and Gabriels and less Mustafis and Xhakas.
Hopefully, this summer we have started to turn things around.
Then you just end up in the Wenger predicament of being “a selling club”.
If you’re selling great players like Tierney or Gabriel, then you will face a huge backlash.
Truth is, the only players supporters want you to sell are duds. No one wants to sell an in demand player because we think they could be great for the club.
Only problem is, no one is going to pay shit for proven shit.
I think we kind of have to accept that is our place – even if we can get back to it. The footballing world has changed (for the worse) thanks for Romans Rubles and The Sheik’s Dirhams. We just spent a lot, but it may have taken that to steady the ship and get the direction right. If $ity of Chel$ea or some other giants coming calling for Saka or Tierney or ESR and the likes in 2-3 years and their heads are turned, really what can we do? The only way to have a hope is to get back… Read more »
I’m sure there was backlash in Liverpool when they sold Coutinho.
The reason you employ a Technical Director is so he can take a long-term view and make unpopular calls which can end up making the club better.
And I absolutely think we’ll have to sell at least one of Tierney, Saka, ESR, Martinelli, or Gabriel, I guess, if he keeps up this level – and I think we should, as long as the price is right.
At the end of this season Leno will only have a year left on his contract. He’s leaving for peanuts anyway. On the other hand Ramsdale is a player the club has identified as being a high potential player and the only way he reaches it is by playing more games. Ramsdale reaching his ceiling sooner is worth way more to us than the couple million quid extra we’d get for Leno by playing him.
Sorry, but have you not been paying attention? We might have been able to sell him for 10 million two years ago, before Covid hit and when his reputation was better. When we sold Emi, we apparently weren’t getting any offers for Leno – I doubt the sources only mean offers in excess of 10 million. If his value drops, we’ll be lucky if somebody takes him off our hands for free. He’s on a fairly high wage, so clubs from outside England will probably think twice about getting him even then. The days of selling senior players we don’t… Read more »
“But there is no room for sentiment. As ruthless as it seems, Leno is the past”.
If we applied this line of thinking to Mikel Arteta, would you agree with it?🤔
I feel like Leno wasn’t really mentally here from the beginning of this season: he didn’t really make any major errors and stayed professional by all means, but he seems to be kinda not willing to do extra and only protecting himself. Him constantly going long against City, without even trying to play short to CBs, drove me nuts.
@Daveo, you have consistently made it a point to state how bad of a goalie you think Leno is, and I couldn’t disagree with you more. He is an excellent goalie and was consistently among our 2-5 best players for his entire time here. The sentiment around him seemed to turn so quickly as soon as Martinez was sold because some fans have a huge attachment to our academy players and want to have them in the team no matter what. Since then, every mistake he makes is heavily scrutinized and pointed out as a reason why we should have… Read more »
I think the frustration with Leno is that we probably would have kept Martinez and sold Leno if he had said the summer before he wanted to leave. As it is, we let go of a fantastic homegrown goalkeeper who wanted to be our number 1 out of (deserved) loyalty to Leno, only for Leno to decide 6 months later that he wants to go too.
i’d be pretty sure arteta feels very let down by leno when he backed him so strongly against the desires of most of the fanbase to keep martinez.
Players need to accept some of the responsibility of this mess too. And there are a number of players that haven’t really cut it. IMO Leno has been one of those in the last year and a half. Isn’t it a natural response to expect more, particularly from the most experienced players that we keep getting told we need to lean on? For the record I don’t think Leno is a bad goalie. Never said that. As I said above he’s solid-to-good. But is that what we’re settling on now? Another Manual Almunia? David Ospina? or Vito Mannone? These guys… Read more »
Leno is not in the same class as Vito Mannone or Manuel Almunia…..
With Alumina we were never out of the champions league let alone out of Europe.
By the same logic, we never fell out of Europe with Silvestre, Squillaci, Charmakh, Birschoff, Kallstrom, Park etc. We even went a season unbeaten with Edu as part of the midfield! Leno is NEVER in the same category as Almunia or Manone. Before his injury against Brighton and most of matches under Unai, he single handedly kept us in games when the entire defense goes AWOL. I remember the despair on this site when he went down to the Maupay challenge. Nobody expected Martinez to do that well but credit to him. But please don’t belittle Leno just to make… Read more »
Almunia had fantastic periods (remember he actually forced his way into being #1) and then he had some rather rubbish periods, just like Leno has done in the last 18 months. Face it he’s just not a great goalie. If he was we’d have all of Europe busting down our doors to pick him up. Well actually, if he was great we would be replacing him in the starting lineup and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Form is termporary class is permanent. But he’s had now over a full season of poor form and he came into Arsenal as… Read more »
> Arteta’s insistence on playing out from the back regardless of the situation will make it difficult for any keeper, including the best of the best to stay confident because there will be so many close calls. I had the same opinion, until I watched the game against City. Smith-Rowe was able to successfully pressure Ederson once and almost got a goal from it, but Ederson remained unfazed, and continued to invite pressure, to pull Arsenal out of shape, and to launch attack after attack. After that game, I understood the decision to sell Martinez, and the decision to get… Read more »
Eh? Martinez looked really good with the ball at his feet during that run in the team. Also, crucially, he seemed able to play mid-range passes over the top of pressing-players, which allowed us to still pass out from the back even if the short pass wasn’t on. I haven’t seen that ability from Leno or Ramsdale. People are quick to deify Ramsdale because he’s the shiny new signing. I’m not sure what people have seen to suggest he’s the goalkeeping missing link so far, considering he’s had nothing to do (and his ratio of long:short passes is practically the… Read more »
ramsdale did it a couple of times against norwich. you must not have been watching.
While I think Leno is missing elements of his game that are required of an excellent goalie, I do agree that he has been one of the more consistent performers in an inconsistent team. I wouldn’t even say fans have an attachment to our academy players, it’s really just an attachment to Emile and Bukayo. I’d even wager that the majority of this site would choose Ødegaard as a starter over ESR if only one could play. The general sentiment seems to be that: Reiss is sub-standard because he didn’t even make the bench. Eddie has peaked despite record low… Read more »
I agree. It’s shockingly poor from his agent and it reminds me of Maitland Niles – our terrible RB situation is basically a result of his agent lying to him about the grass being greener elsewhere as he told the club he refused to be a RB because he (naively) thought Leicester and Wolves wanted to sign him at CM. Since Chambers and Bellerin were injured at the time we therefore signed Cedric as an affordable cover option, which meant that when AMN backtracked Chambers and Bellerin were both fit again and he is now 4th choice.
That will be good Cox Mikel want to see how Leno react to it and that will bring good performance when they challenge each other and that we keep them on their toes. See Henderson and De gea at Man Utd. De gea he’s now given a good account of himself.
Clear Aaron has the polite GK-speak down pat.
Translation: I’m here for your job Bernd.
How things can change in a short time in football.
Ramsdale signed under a gale of social media abuse. He was nothing but a waste of resources!
Fast forward two weeks; Bernd Leno has potentially lost his place to him.
I am happy for the turn of events. No player deserves to go through what he did; not even Willian.
Ramsdale’s mentality and professionalism is super on-point.
*are
are to you too.
Always great to meet a fellow pirate.
Didn’t think the change over would happen this quickly, but you don’t spend £24-£30 million on a goalkeeper, if you don’t plan on making that keeper your No1 at some point. Direct competition is healthy, hopefully we see a positive reaction from Leno, who was only behind Aubameyang is 2019/20 for our player of the season before his injury. Going from Martinez breathing down his neck in training, to having Runarsson, put him in the comfort zone, and it looks like he’s now paying the price for that Hopefully the club learn a lesson from this, and when Leno does… Read more »
Really delighted for Ramsdale but it was quite interesting to see how the fans at the stadium itself immediately took to him and supported him properly as, well, any decent Arsenal fan would, or used to, but which is in stark contrast to some of the disgusting abuse he suffered from online ‘fans’….
I think fans and players need to just distance themselves from the online abuse. The fact that media outlets make reports on twitter posts is fucking embarrassing and that is how abuse gets a platform. Trolls aren’t going anywhere. They exists before social media too. Think of the filth you’ve seen occur and said at football matches in the 70s, 80s, 90s? Some things I saw as a kid growing up in the latter two decades were downright disgusting and made me sick. They will actively abuse anyone and everyone they like because they feed on making others miserable. And… Read more »
There is a very easy way to self police the garbage you so rightly highlight and that is don’t click on it, don’t provide the purveyors of such misinformation and lies the oxygen of finance, don’t look at the headlines just look at who is posting it and how much they’re earning from the advertising by us clicking on the excrement they put up.
We know who they are, we just have to be more selective.
Kev– we both recognize the difference between online fans and social media fans. I’ve long felt that supporters such as yourself have existentially represented those of us diehards around the globe who can’t be there in person.
Hi JW, look mate it’s a minority on social media but a noisy minority and they’re the ones who feed the click baiters. Starve the click baiters is all you can do. Hope you are well buddy…
Result of this situation is always positive when you have two evenly class goalkeepers fighting for the top spot. Both are 3rd ranked keeper for their country.
The best thing to do is to back whosoever Mikel chose to be our goalie. Leno is a fantastic goalkeeper he has saved us numerous times with he’s saves after saves and single handily win us matches and less not forget that pls. He going through a rough patch since coming back from his injury and have let mistakes cripple into his game and he’s stocked can’t get out to perform freely as he does before Cox the criticism and fan not backing him made it hard for him to perform at his best. We are all created differently some… Read more »
if he stops people moaning about Martinez then he gets my vote
Yes, oh yes! Jeez, I can’t bear it anymore.
Hopefully we can sell Leno for 24 million, buy a backup for 8 (?) million and have good money for a striker or depth.
Is it true that Ramsdale took his father’s ashes to his Arsenal contract signing? If that is the case, I have to say I’m 100% down to back him long term. That kind of commitment and respect for playing for this club is hard not to get behind. Hope he’s good enough to be our no. 1 for the next decade…