Fabregas goes to Barca for £35million

[Joker]

It's pathetic that Cesc was sold at such a cheap price. Our brinkmanship failed miserably, and we've ended up losing two top quality players (despite the fact I hold reservations about their characters) and replaced them with has-been, injury prone players. We should have sold Cesc last summer, then invested the transfer funds in a top quality central midfielder who could step in right away and make a difference. Instead, we kept him for one season too long, and reduced the strength of our bargaining position, knowing that Cesc wouldn't want to stay for another season, and Barca realising that they could use Cesc's poor season for us as a justification for paying less than his true worth. We've cocked this transfer up big time, and Wenger must take a lot of the blame.

[Niall_Quinn]

RvP's fault mostly.

[IBK]

In one thread AW is blamed for clinging on to players and having to be forced to sell (nasri), in the next he's blamed for selling too soon and going against the wishes of the board.

Remind me which players AW has clung on to again.

[IBK]

It's pathetic that Cesc was sold at such a cheap price. Our brinkmanship failed miserably, and we've ended up losing two top quality players (despite the fact I hold reservations about their characters) and replaced them with has-been, injury prone players. We should have sold Cesc last summer, then invested the transfer funds in a top quality central midfielder who could step in right away and make a difference. Instead, we kept him for one season too long, and reduced the strength of our bargaining position, knowing that Cesc wouldn't want to stay for another season, and Barca realising that they could use Cesc's poor season for us as a justification for paying less than his true worth. We've cocked this transfer up big time, and Wenger must take a lot of the blame.

I think Fabregas is mostly to blame for the cut price, rather than Wenger. From the manager's point of view, you can't really do much but encourage a player to sign a long contract. If you have a massive, massive bunch of cunts and a player with a massive hard on for those cunts and noone else then there isn't a great deal of leeway, really.

IMO if the manager is to blame, its for not reading the signs, and just getting the deal done for this price early doors. Unfortunately, by trying to be too clever in the transfer market the whole time, buying clubs know exactly what to expect from us - they know we posture and then give in. So in Fabregas' case we should have ditched the pointless posturing and simply set a realistic price in the circumstances, told the player and the Cunts that it was that or nothing and simply refused to negotiate/deal further. That way, Fabregas could have been the one putting pressure on Barcelona to get it done.

[Özim]

Remind me which players AW has clung on to again.

Almunia, Bendtner, Denilson, Squillaci.

You know the sort.

[Letters]

It's pathetic that Cesc was sold at such a cheap price. Our brinkmanship failed miserably, and we've ended up losing two top quality players (despite the fact I hold reservations about their characters) and replaced them with has-been, injury prone players. We should have sold Cesc last summer, then invested the transfer funds in a top quality central midfielder who could step in right away and make a difference. Instead, we kept him for one season too long, and reduced the strength of our bargaining position, knowing that Cesc wouldn't want to stay for another season, and Barca realising that they could use Cesc's poor season for us as a justification for paying less than his true worth. We've cocked this transfer up big time, and Wenger must take a lot of the blame.

Pretty much everyone on here was lauding Wenger and Arsenal last summer for standing up to Barca and not selling Fabregas
We'd still have had to sell him cut price last summer, Barca were never going to meet our valuation. Ever.
'Cos they know he's going there (and nowhere else) eventually. We know it too. And every year his contract runs down our position gets weaker. This was the last year we had a reasonably long contract in our favour, we've sold him at the right time IMO but took too long to sort it out this summer.

[Power n Glory]

There never was a right time to sell Cesc. He's still in his prime and we're still trying to build a championship winning team. 8 years have been wasted.

[Letters]

Well, obviously in an ideal world he'd have stayed with us throughout his career but that was never going to happen.
He always made it clear he'd like to go back to Barca at some point.
Whether our failure in the last few years hastened his exit is debatable, it may have or maybe had we been successful he'd have wanted to move on to new challenges anyway. Who knows?
IMO we did the pragmatic thing this summer but we shouldn't have strung it out all summer to do it.

[Power n Glory]

8 years is a long time and we should have at least built a title winning squad in that time. Staying beyond that point is a bonus, but we haven't made do with the squad and players we've had. It has been a failure and Wenger has no right to ask for more time.

[Cripps_orig]

Well, obviously in an ideal world he'd have stayed with us throughout his career but that was never going to happen.
He always made it clear he'd like to go back to Barca at some point.
Whether our failure in the last few years hastened his exit is debatable, it may have or maybe had we been successful he'd have wanted to move on to new challenges anyway. Who knows?
IMO we did the pragmatic thing this summer but we shouldn't have strung it out all summer to do it.

Then we should have sold him when he was just a teenager if he wasnt going to be loyal to us instead of building a team around a player who didnt want to be here.