Fabregas goes to Barca for £35million

[Kano]

only because they value him.

at any other point a football club can be the cunt to drop a player. times have changed.

[Flavs]

I hold our best (and most highly-paid) players to the highest standards.

you can spinelessly blame the tea-boy or denilson if you like tho

o...k...
i think the whole team and the management were to blame for the debacle last year, i dont any one individual can be blamed.

[IBK]

I personally don't think it's been anywhere near as bad as you're making out, he's not slagged off he club, he's not said if you don't sell me I'll strike etc...Barca want him and he's happy to move back, who wouldn't be to a club like that when you're at a club who have now got a reputation of being proven losers.....with a manager who won't change?

One player does not make a team, a team is a sum of it's parts....Wenger has failed to build a good enough team that's why we've failed to win trophies, with better signings we'd have won stuff with Cesc.

Like I said people have got very bitter and yet the man who is really to blame get's a much easier ride.

Your point re Wenger is a good one. He is more to blame for putting the club in this position. I think he has been as delusional about his ability to persuade Fabregas to stay as he was misguided about making him captain, and convincing him to stay for another season last Summer.

And I think that with hindsight, Wenger's greatest 'crime' has been to build an empire of young players whose loyalty was principally to him, as an individual, than to the club. This has resulted in this alarming want away culture amongst our best players now his 'genius' is seriously open to question.

But IMHO it is naive to defend Fabregas' behaviour in all of this. He has been very subtle about it all, but he has effectively been on strike this Summer and at the very least he has been complicit in allowing Barca to get him on the cheap, while seriously destabilising our club and its reputation and disrupting our season's preparation. If you recall the CL second leg in Barca last season - what we were seeing was a Barcelona player in waiting captaining our team.

Like I say, we can all relate to a player wanting to play for his hometown club, but this does not hide the fact that he has ultimately damaged us in the process.

[BOBN]

I have no issue with any of that. My point is that Farbregas has benefitted from AFC probably as much as AFC has benefitted from him. Difference is that AFC hasn't ended the relationship by being a bit of a cunt.

he couldnt cut it as a CM so wenger found a new position for him (AM). the player himself admitted he prefers to play deeper and is less comfortable at AM but wenger did it cos he knew he was simply costing us games in CM (08/09 season, early defeats to hull etc)

what other top club would find a new position for a player who has failed at another? united? they bombed out veron, forlan etc who are more talented than cesc.

we have done more for him than him us.

[BOBN]

o...k...
i think the whole team and the management were to blame for the debacle last year, i dont any one individual can be blamed.

I said 07/08

[IBK]

only because they value him.

at any other point a football club can be the cunt to drop a player. times have changed.

Well - to a point. AW has a pretty good record of treating players with dignity and letting them leave if they really want to - and a perhaps less enviable record of not being trigger happy when it comes to dropping players.

I agree that top players have wrested initiative from clubs - but they can often be cunts as a result.

[Kano]

the wider point is that it makes little sense to castigate a player for seemingly being a cunt when our club can do the same. edu, cole and diarra would probably argue that could be the case.

[Boss]

Our team isn't built around Fabregas anymore.

The other players simply aren't good enough to supply the same level of end product he does, even when he's playing below form.

[Niall_Quinn]

Whatever else, this is the first time in years we haven't had a genuine world class star at the club. RvP just hasn't been on the pitch enough to warrant the billing and Jack is still progressing. Bergkamp, Henry, Fabregas (has the talent but cannot be compared to the other two in terms of character) and now...

Chamakh.

BTW, Fabregas knew what he was doing, the fucker was even knocking around with his Barca chums this summer when everyone knew this was likely to be the year he'd run. The captain is meant to stay with the ship, a principle that may be dead in the modern, "enlightened" world so fair enough - in practical terms he's done what's best for him. But let's not give him and credit or his excuses any credence just because he has turned out the be as bland and ordinary and pathetic in terms of character as mostly anybody else you could pull in off the street. Where are the fucking heroes gone? And yes, they really did exist. They weren't perfect but they had a lot more about them than these shitty little people who talk the talk but don't walk the walk.

[LDG]

Our team isn't built around Fabregas anymore.

The other players simply aren't good enough to supply the same level of end product he does, even when he's playing below form.

Well Utd won the league last year with players who aren't of the same class as Fabregas, and it was built on teamwork, pure and simple.

The fact is, we shouldn't have to rely on one player, and in order to heal that wound, we need to make fucking sure that we start working for each other more.

Fabs is gone. Get over it.

I already am.