“I will only say one thing, I have great respect for Arsene Wenger, for Arsenal football club and for the Arsenal fans. Sometimes not even in my house I felt more love than I felt at Arsenal.”
“I had a long conversation with Arsene, it was probably the greatest conversation I’ve had with someone in my life and I respect him so much and I don’t want to say too much about this.”
“He told me to concentrate on my football, he told me to concentrate on the World Cup, he told me to leave it in his hands, he will deal with whatever happens in my future and that’s what I’m doing, just concentrating on football.”
“It’s not up to me anymore and it’s just now about Arsenal and wherever it has to be and that’s it.”
It appears to me that the worst case scenario at the moment is that Arsene has told Cesc he can only leave if Barca pay a proper transfer fee. At the moment is appears highly unlikely that Barca have the money to pay what Arsenal want and that means that Cesc may well be staying put.
Obviously the media are still spinning things with headlines like 'Fabregas' frank Wenger talk reveals Arsenal exit '. However there are some rather worrying sides of the story from a Barca perspective, there is a possibility that Barca will be told to sod off whatever their offer.
One thing is clear, Cesc Fabregas is a man of class, he will not openly seek a transfer as the scoundrels from Barca would like him to do, this would make it easy for Barca to snatch him for a cut price fee. Barca have shown themselves to be a bunch of utter c*nts throughout this affair. Arsene has also come out of this with a lot of credit, not many managers have his man management skills, another thing that is clear is that he has never stood in the way of a player who wants to leave. Cesc's dad is behaving like a tool, Arsenal are not obliged to sell their captain on the cheap, long term contracts cannot just be pissed on and ignored.
We have no need to sell Cesc, he is in his prime, has several years left on his contract, we do not need the cash. The way in which they have publicly tried to unsettle the player to drop the fee is a disgrace. I suspect it will take at least 50 million to get Arsenal to talk and which doubt if the paupers from Barca with their 400million debts have got what it takes to pay a fair fee. If they don't have the money then they should shut the f*ck up.
17 comments:
mate couldn't have said it better! with cesc at the helm we will lift a couple of trophies next season :)
Agree. Well said.
Cesc has so much class...it shows class doesn't come with age..it's inborn.
Hope Cesc can win something with us before moving to Barca...
Go gunners!
FINALLY!!!!!!!
A Gooner Blogger that makes some sense! thats pretty much what i thought after seeing Cesc's interview on video yesterday. in print it looks so much bleaker, but when said it really does reflect the whole scenario differently
I found your blog through fourfourtwo.com, but i'll certainly be reading it in future
Great blog.
im sure them barca wankers still owe us money from the henry/hleb transfers! if this is true pay up how can you bid for our players when you owe us money i mean if you owed the guy in the chip shop for a bag of chips your not gonna go in there and say mate give us 4 cod and large chips!! he would tell you fuck off and pay wat you owe first barca have no class why there not being done for tapping up god only knows!!!
The only thing that concerns me in all of this is the utter silence from Wenger. I understand he may well be on holiday, but if it was me, I'd at least throw the official site a quote or two about how Barca should be mindful of Cesc's long-term contract, etc.
I only hope his silence isn't a by product of his scouring the transfer market for suitable Cesc substitutes...of which I'm sure there are none up to his level of quality.
hi,
don't think there's anything to gain by Wenger speaking in public,
it's best he gets on with signing players we need and ignoring the media
agreed completely. I would much rather have Wenger focusing on improving the club, rather than refuting every ridiculous article coming from the Spanish/English gossip rags.
I just feel like he made it a point during the season to make it known that Cesc was under contract and not available for Barca (or any other club). His silence now seems like a shift from that behavior. Hope I'm wrong.
As I've said elsewhere, if Cesc has this much class, then that contradicts any suggestion that he has "Barcelona in his DNA."
well said.
AW and Cesc have handled it great. Cesc must be feeling a lot of pressure from Barca, his Spanish teammates, his family....
rahul
1979 called it rightly when this story broke 10 days ago. And well done to him. There are a lot of bloggers whose posts from last Wednesday look quite stupid now.
I have nothing but admiration for Cesc and this latest quote from him speaks volumes for him and for AW.
People would do well to keep that in mind in the weeks ahead.
Ted: "1979 called it rightly when this story broke 10 days ago. And well done to him. There are a lot of bloggers whose posts from last Wednesday look quite stupid now."
Oh really? And just exactly how is that? To the contrary, 1979 has been proven to be entirely wrong in his first blog.
I happen to agree with the sentiments in this latest blog about Cesc still being a gooner but in no way shape or form does it disprove anything that Ballague and Graham Hunter and John Cross all reported.
How do Cesc's latest comments disprove their reports that Cesc had a conversation with AW asking to leave Arsenal?
In fact, those latest comments PROVE that Ballague was reporting accurately: Cesc has asked to leave, period.
He has never denied that. He said absolutely nothing about the content of that conversation with Arsene. He in fact confirmed such a conversation occurred and that it's up to Arsene to handle the matter.
The press was indeed correct in interpreting that as CONFIRMATION that Ballague's story was accurate.
And Cesc's father has also CONFIRMED that Cesc asked to leave.
There was one last comment from Cesc you forgot to mention. A reporter asked him if he could give any guarantees about his future at Arsenal.
He said "no."
Now, since Arsenal have held firm and are refusing to buckle under Barca's obvious tactics to unsettle the player and drive a wedge between him and the fans and the club, the transfer has not happened as automatically as they believed it would.
I suppose an argument can be made that Cesc is behaving with class, I honestly can't say for certain. It's obvious to me he's had talks with Barca secretly, which isn't very classy. And his refusal to submit an official transfer request (just so he won't have to pay 10% of the transfer fee) forces Arsenal to deal with this public campaign of Barca's.
Arsenal have indeed behaved with utmost dignity in this, I think they're entirely correct in remaining silent.
But absolutely NONE of this refutes the original reports: Cesc had a conversation with AW in which he asked to leave, period.
The reason you got so much stick with your first blog on this was because you dismissed the content of Ballague's report.
(BTW, I now think that Cesc will stay with us one more season and leave next summer).
Two other points:
1. Do we really want to keep Cesc if he wants to leave?
2. I've been wondering about what might've helped to influence Cesc to decide to leave this summer. One factor might be watching 3 of his teammates get brutalized by the league's cloggers, watch the media treat the perpetrators as innocent victims, watch his club get trashed for our response to those incidents, and then watch those 3 players struggle to come back from those assaults.
Another factor might involve the internal politics at Barca. LaPorta is about to leave the office of president. For yrs he's been obsessed with bringing back Cesc because he's had to deal with years of criticism from within the club for having "lost" Cesc to Arsenal. So he's determined to get back Cesc as part of his legacy as he leaves the presidency, which is (I think) this summer.
So... did Cesc's sudden urgency in leaving come from (at least in part) LaPorta's camp telling Cesc's parents "look, it's now or never, he's got to come back this summer because my successor won't be so interested in getting your son back to the club." Does Cesc believe (erroneously) that he may not be able to return to Barca after LaPorta leaves?
marcus,
the general overall point was right; ie cesc has not left yet and may well stay
i was just making the general point that hacks are often wrong, they were wrong again, they may have been right in some aspects but they assumed cesc was leaving, this assumption has since been shown to be wrong, cesc is still very much an Arsenal player if you hadn't noticed
has cesc directly asked to leave? you are speculating, you have no evidence for this, he may well have done but it is still speculation, he may want to go and his father has said this, however you do NOT know what he said to Arsene, he has not said!
if barca won't pay a decent fee, they can f*ck off, end of
so in conclusion I am most definitely not entirely wrong, I am right with a lot, Cesc is still an Arsenal player and will be until Arsenal tell us otherwise, that's a fact
it does no one any good to listen to what the media are speculating, the vast majority of it is utter drivel
I wonder, if there was a French club as successful as Barca -- say, if Paris Saint-German was that good, which, of course, they haven't been -- would we hear about all these French Gunners who "have Paris in their DNA" and who should "come home"?
Dear Another Arsenal Blog,
I own the website http://www.arsenaltransfers.co.uk and wondered whether you would be interested in doing a link share scheme. Take a look at the site but the title is rather self explanatory and if you wouldn't mind getting back to me that would be great.
Thanks
Andy
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