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The speculation over Cesc Fàbregas’ possible move back to Barcelona has taken the internal navel gazing amongst the Gooner Nation to a new level. Whether he will go or not is unclear. It is more likely than not I think, but it would appear that Highbury House is showing some determination to hang on to him.
First things first. I want him to stay. Big style. He’s one of the most gifted players in the world on his day. He also has a contract which has four more seasons to run. We all know however that contracts don’t mean nearly as much as they should in football. Cesc’s pay was beefed up in the last close season with a back-dated pay rise. His package is, according to the best information I can get – costing us well over £6 million a season with on-costs and agent’s fees.
One of the reasons for giving him a pay rise was the interest the club has in maintaining his sell-on value. The transfer fee for a player coming towards the end of his contract is far lower than a player with three or four seasons left. It wasn’t all open-handed generosity. I don’t have any information on Cesc’s personal professionalism or attitudes. I have no idea if he would sulk and throw moodies as Emmanuel Adebayor did in his last season, despite getting a big pay rise the previous summer. His attitude completely went down the toilet, having been excellent when he first arrived from AS Monaco. I was happy to see the back of him.
I’d like to think that Fàbregas has enough attachment to Arsenal having arrived as a sixteen year old to bury any disappointment if he doesn’t end up getting his apparent wish to return to Catalonia. If he is still with us come next season I want his head in the club and completely focussed on the field. There’s no point in keeping him if he’s going to swan about and sulk. I’m not in a position to know how he will react but my instinct tells me he’s professional enough to shut up and soldier. There are players who seem to understand that whatever they might want personally they have a responsibility to us, the people who pay their huge salaries, to give it their all.
The signs are that the club is going fight to keep Cesc. So they should. The history is that a player who wants to go goes however. Both Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry stayed longer than they wanted to, but only for an additional season. In our favour is Barcelona’s financial position. They aren’t skint but neither are they rolling in it.
They’re about to spend €250 million (just over £227 million) on a major re-vamp of the Nou Camp and have already agreed to lash out a reported €40 million (around £36.3 million) transfer fee to Valencia for David Villa, plus a no doubt extravagant salary package. Barcelona is a members’ club so no rich sugar daddy is around to fund transfer fees and salaries. The new UEFA financial fair play regulations are also on the horizon and the banks aren’t in the mood to lend money that they’re not completely convinced can be repaid in Spain. Aggregate club debt there has ballooned to Premier League levels at a total of €3.5 billion (£3.18 billion) according to a recent study by the University of Barcelona.
Barcelona continues to make a trading profit but there isn’t a lot of slack in their budget. That works for us. I’m sure that Cesc wants to go but we’re holding a decent hand in any negotiations. If he does stay it’ll only be for one more season though is precedent is anything to go by looking at Vieira and Henry. In those two cases I thought Arsčne got it right. We saw the best years of both those players. Neither has reached the personal heights they did with us with Juve, Inter or Barcelona, although Henry was a second-rank part of the Barça side that won everything in sight in 2008/9. Vieira also picked up three Serie A scudetti with Internazionale, although he only turned out for them in 67 Serie A games in three and a half seasons there.
Cesc is different however in that he is now approaching his peak years as a player. To lose him now would be a cruel blow to our hopes of constructing a third great team under Wenger. Some of the manager’s critics say he inherited the only good defence he’s had from George Graham. Not true. Wenger did have the brains to not fix what wasn’t broken after his arrival in October 1996. As the fabulous Wall That George Graham Built gradually wound down be built an excellent defence bringing in Jens Lehmann, Sol Campbell, Lauren and promoting Ashley Cole from the youth ranks. Before Cole he brought in Sylvinho who had to be shipped out sharpish after his EU dual nationality was questioned. It was that defence which played in The Invincibles side, winning the League in 2004. Contrary to opinion in some quarters Wenger can construct a defence. He needs to do it again if we’re going to get anywhere.
Within the Gooner Nation there’s an increasingly acrimonious debate with ultra-loyalists, caricatured as Arsčne FC supporters, on the one side and those who think Wenger is well past his time at the club on the other. I’m not instinctively somebody who looks for the middle of the road. It’s an excellent place to be run over. I’ve also blogged in the past about my suspicions that the board is in it for themselves rather than the greater glory of Arsenal FC.
In this case however, never mind what I and most Gooners care about which is success on the field and upholding the best of the club’s history and traditions, it makes no business sense to let Cesc go if we can possibly hang on to him. Part of the problem is that the board treated us like mushrooms, trying to keep us in the dark and feed us a lot of bullshit about the new ground. There were repeated statements that building the Grove wouldn’t affect the money available for the team. That was always complete bollocks. I supported the move despite what the board was saying rather than because of it.
The situation was made worse by the arrival of Roman Abramovich at Chelsea. His massive spending, way above what Chelsea could afford from their own pocket, pushed up player costs for everybody. Great for the players and good luck to them, but no good for anybody else. A lot of the money that would otherwise have been available for quality additions in the transfer market has had to go on keeping up with the Jones just to hang on to players.
We now also face competition from the Abu Dhabi millions at Manchester City. To spit the dummy as some are doing and demand sweeties like tiresome, arrogant children is puerile. I support Arsenal because I’m an Arsenal supporter. I’ll criticise and demand change if I think it’s in the best interest of the club but the “what have you done for me lately?” attitude is getting very old. Yes, Wenger needs to show that he recognises the weaknesses we all see and is addressing them. To change managers now though would in all likelihood mean another period of re-building.
I would have more sympathy if we were going backwards, plummeting down the league. We aren’t. Our problem is that we’re stuck on a plateau and don’t appear to have worked out the route back to the summit of the game. That’s the challenge that faces us all. Let’s hope that Cesc is still with us next season for a renewed assault on the commanding heights. I believe it’s a slim hope but maybe, just maybe we can look forward to one more season with him at the controls. If we can get to the next level come May 2011, then who knows?
Keep the faith!
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