Following the humiliating 6-1 defeat that Wales suffered at the hands of Serbia in September, Arsenal midfielder Aaron Ramsay was relieved of the captaincy and replaced by Ashley Williams but, according to Chris Coleman, the Welsh manager, he has not been made a scapegoat. The Welsh national team have lost all 4 games since Coleman took charge, and the former manager of Fulham said that if he didn’t start changing things he would be a coward.
Coleman met up with Ramsay on Thursday at the Arsenal training ground and said afterwards that the 21 year old, who became the youngest ever captain of Wales when he was appointed skipper by Gary Speed back in March 2011, had responded maturely to the news. Coleman even suggested that Ramsay was actually relieved that the pressure of leading a struggling national team had been taken off his young shoulders.
Coleman has admitted that it was a far from easy decision and that it was something he had been considering for a while, and he felt that with Ramsay being so young he had really felt the pressure. Coleman added that he thought the team needed to go in a different direction to get out of this slump as the current system clearly wasn’t working and of all the changes he decided to make, this was the biggest.
Coleman went on to say that he fully expects Ramsay to lead his county again in the future, and wanted to make it clear that by making the decision to ask him to step down as skipper he was in no way pointing the finger of blame at Ramsay for their current poor form. He said that Ramsay could in no way be blamed for the losses simply because he was captain, and in fact blamed himself for not changing things sooner.