Every manager he's ever had at Arsenal and Everton has made him a regular first team player. They've all shown their belief in him. Don't get me wrong, I think we'll manage fine without him, but some of the stick that he's getting on here is ridiculous.
That's not true at all. I'm not going to go into the great detail of checking because I couldn't be arsed but he's played 223 PL games in his career, he's either been subbed off or subbed on in 146 of them meaning he's only played a full 90 minutes in roughly 1/3 of his games, that is the very definition of a squad player.
Fact of the matter is Arsenal have a good history of playing youth, even beyond them being good enough and the season he played most for them was directly before they laughed us out of the room when we actually offered to buy him, they couldn't accept the offer quick enough. I would say it's very clear that in his entire career Lampard is the only manager that truly wanted him, which just so happened to coincide with Lampard being by far the worst manager he's played under.
It is no coincidence to me or anyone else that can watch a football game without stats that he suddenly became a regular first team member once the club started going further down. Since signing his minutes have increased a lot season after season, with the exception of Ancelotti's time here, where clearly one of the greatest managers of all time clearly wasn't going to put up with a player of his calibre anywhere near his team, in that time he barely played to start that season up until December, where we were like 2nd at Christmas or something mad like that. Obviously I'm not saying that he was the reason we dropped off so massively the second half of the season but he played less that season for a team that was in the Champions League spots, he played more for a team that dropped to 10th.