It's not the front three, it's the midfielders who don't provide enough cover. Which is why i said I understand why wenger playz ramsey there instead of in the middle. Ramsey needs specific defensive duties, otherwise he is far too attracted by the ball, and playing him centrally would force ozil/walcott -two players who are particularly good at either tracking back or pressing- to give help on the flank. If instead of ramsey they had, say lampard, this wouldn't be an issue. It's a personnel problem. With that said, i do believe the added offensive threat and contribution ramsey could provide would offset the defensive problems against the majority of arsenal's opponents. It's just against the better teams that this would be a real issue. And wenger doesn't seem to care either way given he's played ramsey in a midfield 2 with iwobi-ozil-sanchez-giroud against freaking PSG
I agree with what you said about Ramsey being "far too attracted by the ball" -- however I'd phrase it as "Ramsey went Hollywood after he scored a bunch of goals [mostly early] in the 13-14 season." Going into 13-14 I was whinging about how Arsenal was "too cutesy [with passes] in/around the box" and how they needed to simply have someone "step up and kick the [expletive] ball at the net; preferably very hard!" and then, as if my prayers were answered, Ramsey showed up and did just that. I remember many of his early-mid 13-14 goals naturally occurring within the flow of the game; it would often work out that as he came forward from his CM position the ball would swing over to him and he'd get great chances to literally just step up and blast the ball towards the net. It was exactly what Arsenal needed at the time!
But then he cooled down towards the end of 13-14, and his goal-lust was re-awakened during the 2014 FA Cup Final Extra Time, where in the 2nd half of ET Ramsey was desperately trying to uncork any shot that he could if he had even a half-decent look ~15-30ft from the goal-- almost as if to say to his teammates "lads, we need to score a goal to win this game! don't let this go to penalties!" Of course, most people don't remember Ramsey forcing 3-5 long and basically wildly-desperate shots at the goal during ET because they only remember his last one-- the one that went in! That goal singlehandedly reinvigorated his goal lust to the extent that when he started out the 14-15 season [playing on the wing] he was basically out there looking to poach goals and he essentially became a tap-in-merchant that needed a lucky break/bounce/rebound/[something] to set him up with a goal. It was pretty sad to see a guy who Wenger proudly called "The Complete Midfielder" in 13-14 turn into a rather bang average (if even that good) goal poaching winger, especially when you came off of a [13-14] season where Ramsey scored all of those goals as a function of being a CM who would creep up from his deeper positions and occasionally make opponents pay for letting Arsenal have too much fluidity of ball movement in/around their box.
Fortunately, nowadays I see more of a hybrid of "Complete Midfielder Ramsey" and "Hollywood Winger Ramsey" out there, which gives me hope that Wenger might realize that he can't really "get away with" playing with 2 holding mids in his midfield against solid-or-better opponents. He's essentially got 3 DMs in Coquelin/El-Neny/Xhaka, and ideally I think you have to pick one of those 3 and then pair them up with a more "positive" or "offensively capable" CM such as Cazorla, Ramsey, or hell even the Ghost of Jack Wilshere (who could technically "do a job" for Arsenal right about now, but who am I kidding; Wilshere would be out til February/March by now if he stayed at Arsenal this year) -- Otherwise, if you try to put two holding mids out there against a defensively minded manager/team, say, Jose Mourinho at Manchester United; I reckon just about everyone here saw ManUtd go out and absolutely wreck Arsenal to such an extent that I believe that the 1-1 @ Old Trafford Arsenal performance was the worst I've ever seen; even worse than 1-5 @ Anfield and 0-6 @ Chelsea It was
that bad, I mean, David De Gea finished the game with 0 saves! What more can I say?
Anyways, as I look up at a wall of text here I just want to make sure I come back to where I started off in replying to your message; right now Arsenal absolutely needs Ramsey in the midfield next to one of their 3 DMs; otherwise you run the risk of having a midfield pairing that can't consistently bring the ball up from the backs across the half-line and into the opponent's half, let alone towards/into the opponent's box. If you can't do that it doesn't matter if you have a 40mil+ rated #10 in Ozil or a $2.50 rated #10 in "that loudmouth from the pub" -- if your midfielders can't consistently get the ball up into positive/forward positions in the opponent's half then you're going to have games where you realize circa 60' "wow, Theo Walcott is actually playing today!?" When your midfield can't consistently bring the ball forward, your attackers often freak out when they actually get a rare chance to do something, thinking something like "holy crap I have to do something brilliant here otherwise i might not get another decent chance for another 5-15 minutes!" That often compels your attackers to try "Hollywood" stuff, aka hoofing a "Home Run Ball" into the box praying for a brilliant volley or whatever you call the football equivalent of a one-timer in hockey, because since they can't play proper offensively-minded positive football they figure they might as well try to play some superhero football and that always results in quick tidy turnovers to your opponents. Generally, I'd have to say that having a non-dynamic 2x-holding-midfield basically puts the whole Arsenal team out of whack...
...and don't forget that even though today's game ended up 5-1 for Arsenal, the game was "1-Nil to the Arsenal" for a good ~20-25mins/+ into a second half where WHU was bossing possession and consistently getting the ball in/around Arsenal's box to such an extent that it felt like it wasn't a matter of
if West Ham equalized, it was a matter of
when West Ham equalized (especially with the commentators on NBCSN just gushing and generally oozing with praise for England's Brave Andy Carroll) and it honestly felt like Arsenal was going to concede that equalizer and then have to dig in and fight to hold on to even 1 point... Fortunately Alexis Sanchez stepped up out of nowhere with 2 absolutely class clinical goals at the most important juncture for Arsenal, which quickly turned the game around from "snatching [draw/defeat] from the jaws of victory" to "Wow, Bilic isn't going to survive past January, is he?" =D
Lord knows I've said enough i this epic post, but one other thing I have to say about 16-17 Arsenal is that this side definitely has more "fight" in them than what i've seen over the last 3 seasons. Obviously their relative/down-tick in form over the last ~4-6 weeks can be traced back to the Cazorla injury, because once that happened you end up having to rely on Aaron Ramsey at CM. On paper that's all fine and good, but if you play him there too consistently you know that you're due for another 4-6 week hammy within ~2-3 months of regular usage, so Arsene has been surprisingly proactive in seemingly rotating his players this year, which means that he's had games with a Coquelin/El-Neny midfield and call it a hunch all of the ManUtd fans here loved that midfield pairing for Arsenal, which is all the more reason they gotta sort out CM right now because holy cow I'm seriously ready to type "Where's Jack Wilshere when you need him?"
(please forgive me for "going for it" with this generally too-long post. I promise I'll be way more concise and "housebroken" in the immediate future; I just have some "fire and passion for the cannon" so obviously I'm going to want to go TLDR about Arsenal on the best ManUtd/Football forum on the internet!)
There's no hiding from the Giflord.