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"We do not buy superstars, we make them." Arsene Wenger

Thursday 23 June 2011

The Cesc Fabregas Saga

Is it just me or are the majority of Arsenal fans fed up of Barcelona being linked with Fabregas without bothering to put a serious bid in? It happens every summer and will continue to do so until they finally get their man.
There are many reasons why Barcelona won't buy Cesc, the main one being Barcelona's financial problems. It's rumoured that the Spanish giants have around £40million in the kitty and if Pep Guardiola wants more, he has to raise it from sales. However I can't see them selling that many players so realistically they will have maximum transfer funds of about £50-£60million. But there's more problems their side of the deal. The first is that they want to buy Sanchez from Udinese. They have to compete against Man City for the Chilean winger and currently the price on his head is around £40million which is probably double what he's actually worth. If they succeed in this signing, they would be likely to miss out on Fabregas due to a lack of money. The second problem caused by themselves is that they are unwilling to offer more than £35million. That is a very low valuation for someone who, in just 303 appearances for Arsenal has 100 assists and 57 goals. Just in the league alone last season, Fabregas had 3 goals and 14 assists in just 25 games. That's an average of 1 assist every 1.8 games and that's considering Arsenal don't score nearly as much as Barcelona do. That is very good reading yet Barcelona don't think Fabregas has improved since last year. Did they watch the World Cup? In extra time, Iniesta scored the winner thanks to a pass from none other than Cesc Fabregas which meant the Spanish won the World Cup. In 10, 20 or 30 years time, when Spanish people re-live that great moment they will see Fabregas setting up the goal which gave his country the World Cup. Purely for this, the Catalan club should stop embarrassing themselves with offers below what Cesc is worth.
Time for a little comparison, what does £35million actually buy you in football? Well, I start with Alex Hleb. At 28, Barcelona snapped him up for 17million euros. A lot of money for someone that only started 5 La Liga games. Alternatively there was Andy Carroll, bought for £35million. So, on that basis, he is worth the same as Cesc Fabregas. I don't think so. Or maybe Torres who, for a fee of £50million scored 1 goal in 14 games and that was against the worst team in the division, West Ham. Also, there's the £20million for Henderson, who didn't even impress at the U21 European championship or £16million for Phil Jones who will sit on Manchester United's bench. Finally, for the same price, Lazio bought Hernan Crespo some 11 years ago. So for Barcelona to say Fabregas is worth no more than £35million, it's ludicrous.
If Barcelona eventually stump up around £45million for Fabregas, there is still a large obstacle in the way. This is Arsene Wenger. He has built the Arsenal team around Fabregas so to let it all go down the pan for nothing, would be unthinkable. Should his reluctance to let our captain go finally give in then it would have to be on his terms. 
Arsenal have the upper hand in this deal as we don't need the money, nor do we need to get rid of one of our finest. Barcelona, on the other hand, want Fabregas for Xavi's replacement and feel the best man for that job is one of their youth players. Fabregas has a lot of respect for Arsene and I'm sure he will want to repay him in the form of silverware. There's still 3 years left on his contract but should Arsene feel it's time to bid farewell, it would have to be a serious offer and early in the summer to allow plenty of time to find a replacement.
The press won't give up on this story however and so we will have to accept the rumours and believe that Wenger has the final say.


To end with, I would like to tell you about Yahoo's take on this. They heard Barcelona are banning colour photocopying and firing security guards. However they said this was done to raise funds for Fabregas. An extra couple of grand isn't going to change our mind.


Pictures courtesy of en.wikipedia.org

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