I've seen it asked whether losing Fabregas will affect Wenger's motivation. I think this is a fair question, since more than any other player Fabregas embodied AW's pastoral attitude to developing a world class player and building a team around him. The fact that there is no ready replacement lined up for him suggests to me that at least until very recently AW still believed that his personal relationship with the player, combined with Barcelona's outright refusal to meet our valuation, might miraculously convince him to stay - and I can well believe that this is a body blow for our manager.

If we hadn't seen evidence that our team in general seems to be stale and lacking in ideas, and that the manager has taken no substantive steps to alter the way we play the game, I might have suggested that maybe Fabregas leaving would be a kick up the ass that pursuaded our manager to freshen up the team properly and adopt a new approach - after all he has taken the team in new directions 2 or 3 times during his tenure.

But AW has looked increasingly desperate for the past 6 months - and I wonder whether what we have been seeing, both on and off the pitch, is a decline in the powers of the manager, as well as the ability of his team and the self-belief at the club.

What do people think will be the effect of Fabregas departure on the manager?