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By the time of the cup final, Ramsey had started 12 league and cup games out of the previous 18 (including the whole 90 minutes at Middlesbrough) and made a further 3 substitute appearances.
In his first season at Arsenal, while he was limited to only some brief Premier League appearances, he was given plenty of Champions' League experience.
He was also the best player we had at the club, even at that young an age.
Of course Jones should have started him.
I really don't agree. you could see he was going to be a quality player but he was still a kid, and playing against a powerful Portsmouth side
of those games he had managed a goal against Burnley and one against chasetown.
and as we played ,4 across the midfield at the time we would have been dropping one of mcphail, Rae, Ledley or whittingham.
I agree with Rjk, you could definitely make an argument for starting him in the cup final but you could make an equally strong one for not starting him, but it's turned into a stick to beat Jones with and I think some fans see it as clear cut as him not starting is the reason we lost
Rae could have been dropped. Pompey went with a midfield 3 and Rae's aggressive style was completely nullified.
A better option would have been to drop Hasselbaink and go 4-5-1. Whitts played on the right that day and had a bit of a stinker. He could have been given a freer role with Ramsey out on the right.
Of course, that would have meant Jones having a plan B.
Phil Foden is breaking through into the Man City team this year aged 20. There really aren't many managers who would have risked a teenagers development by starting them in the cup final.
But we don't need another stick to beat Jones with considering he was a manager acting as if Arsene Wenger had never come to England despite Wenger revolutionising English football from 1996 and DJ joining us in 2005.
Who knows how bad it was at other clubs but we know if those teams had treated pre-season training with any sort of respect they would have won promotion.
I get all of that.
Perhaps I should put my opinion forward. Ramsey, even at that age, was clearly a very good player for us. He became a regular starter in a side that had turned around a dreadful opening 3-4 months of the season and his involvement helped get us close to the playoffs. He was a regular starter in the FA cup run, including at Middlesbrough. At the end of the previous season, Jones said he had a youngster he would have no problems starting games. At his tender age, he was still one of our best players. This is at a time when Whitts was still hit and miss.
Norman Whiteside was (not sure if he still is) the youngest scorer in both league and FA cup finals. At his age, he was a phenomenal player.
Out of the midfield 4 of Ledley, Whitts, Rae and McPhail, which of those were more talented than Ramsey at the time? It's a tricky question as they all had their pros and cons. Did they all deserve to keep Ramsey out based on ability? If you're answering yes, then I'd really like to know why.
Protecting a kid is a feeble excuse. Plenty of youngsters have graced cup finals. As it was, when Ramsey did come on in the cup final, we looked our most dangerous.
It was anyway.
In the Leicester playoff semi final we had a midfield of Burke, McPhail, Whitts and Ledley. Last year, when someone pointed this out I thought that couldn't be true. It turned out that that quartet played quite a few games and was very successful. I looked at it and thought powderpuff, but it worked.
I can see both sides of the Ramsey FA Cup Final argument. Portsmouth were a very big, physical team that could also play a bit as well, it would have been asking an awful lot of a seventeen year old to have been able to change the way the match panned out. - I think Dave Jones’ decision was an understandable one.
However, this was a kid who was the calmest player on the pitch when he came on and guided us to a narrow home win over Burnley while still a sixteen year old, who ran the show in his first league start against QPR, who coped easily and impressively in an away Quarter Final against a Premier League team and had played well at right back against Southampton in a game where he provided the assist for the only goal - you can’t help thinking that Ramsey would have coped fine if he had been in from the start against Portsmouth even if the outcome might have been the same.