When we signed Aaron Ramsey in January, there was an obvious element of gambling about it, his recent fitness and injury history wasn’t great – to put it mildly – but we all knew what he was capable of when he was fit.
It didn’t work out and the “I told you so” brigade were out in full force but it is a move that we have seen before and one on an even bigger scale given that over £4million was paid to bring Paul Gascoigne back to the UK from his injury hit spell with Lazio in Serie A – again, we all knew the player he could be, but he just couldn’t stay fit in his time in Italy.
Gazza was a few years younger than Ramsey when he signed but his injury problems had been equally if not more taxing on his body, however, we all know what the England legend did in his first two seasons at the club when he was able to avoid any fitness issues, world class midfielders should dominate the SPFL and he certainly did.
For those of a certain age, seeing Gascoigne’s statistics on Championship Manager recently, via 90s Football on Twitter, is a stark reminder as to how good a player we had at our disposal and, despite his high “injury proneness” rating, he was clearly worth the gamble given how special a talent he was. Sometimes, at our level, if you want a player this good, you have to take a risk or two.
So, does Ramsey deserve a second chance to show that he too can dominate for Rangers?
In the last five seasons he has played 20, 41, 35, 47 and 34 times including internationals, there is no way that you could count on him in the same way that you could Connor Goldson, James Tavernier or John Lundstram but, before he came to us, he was still making a decent contribution.
The biggest issue when he signed was that he hadn’t been fit for months then contracted Covid-19 and hadn’t even been training, and it showed in that all we saw were glimpses of what he was capable of.
His future looks a little uncertain with Juventus said to be willing to pay Ramsey €2million to end his contract with the Welshman holding out for €4m – in short, it would take a little negotiation and a fee in the region of €2m – or less – to bring him back and even then, there are no guarantees that he would be available.
A full pre-season, with his game time managed properly could see him playing a role under Giovanni van Bronckhorst similar to what Gazza did for Walter Smith but, after his six-month loan spell, regardless of how good he might be on paper or Championship Manager, I’m not sure he would be welcomed with quite the same reception as he was first time round.