Ramsey unlikely to be ready for start of Arsenal season

Part of why some of us find international football to be an irritating distraction is because it interferes with the club game that we love to watch week in, week out. A successful club like Arsenal has a bunch of players who get called to international duty, and the most successful players are the ones who end up need to rest into the beginning of the season. We saw it happen in summer 2014 with our German internationals being fatigued ahead of the beginning of that season, and it looks like it’s going to happen again this year.

Arsenal and Wales midfielder Aaron Ramsey, whose outstanding tournament came to an end when Wales lost to Portugal yesterday, has stated he doesn’t think he’ll be ready for the first game of the 2016-17 Arsenal season. Arsenal have already begun their pre-season preparations but, as we know, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger likes to give his players about a month off before they return for the long, hard Premier League Season. Ramsey has been told to report on August 1; Arsenal’s Premier League campaign begins against Liverpool on August 14. With less than two weeks of pre-season training ahead of that first game, Ramsey is unlikely to be fully fit for that game.

As reported in The Guardian, Ramsey had this to say:

“I am back on 1 August, so I have a few weeks off but, obviously, it kicks off a couple of weeks afterwards,” Ramsey said. “A few years ago, Germany won the World Cup and the German players came in just a few days before the first game of the season, but they missed that. He [Wenger] does like to give players a little break and I’ll be getting the same treatment. I feel I need a few weeks off now.”

Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll be waiting for RamXhaka a couple weeks longer than we expected.