Good morning to everyone, especially those people who pay their web hosting bills to keep their online platforms running!
There’s not a lot happening today from an Arsenal perspective, nothing new in terms of rumours etc, but I will mention the retirement of Cesc Fabregas. I fully get that people’s opinions vary, and I’m not going to try and convince anybody one way or the other at this point. All I can say is that he was one of my favourite players ever, and I loved watching him grow and develop into one of the best of the world at Arsenal.
Of course, things went in a direction nobody liked, but as we sit here today and consider some of the contract extensions we’ve made in the last little while, I think there’s a direct correlation between how good a team is and your ability to keep your best players. If they think they can achieve their ambitions with you, it’s much less complicated. The Cesc thing was a little more unique, in that it was Barcelona – his boyhood club, managed by Pep, his boyhood idol.
I just wonder if we might have been been better able to fend off those advances, for a while at least, if the team around him had been better. Whatever you think of him, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that we didn’t give him the players around him his talent deserved. The big ‘what if?’ moment was when we didn’t get the Xabi Alonso transfer over the line (something he spoke about in the podcast I did with him during lockdown), and I honestly believe we asked him to carry too much of a burden in midfield.
But hey, you might disagree. I just loved him as a player, from the time he broke through to the time he left. The vision, the weight of pass, so many assists, and some incredible goals too. It will be interesting to see what happens next in his career, and having done some of his coaching badges at Arsenal last season, he’s obviously determined to stay in the game and become a coach himself. Where that starts, we’ll wait and see.
For now, I’ll leave you with one of my favourite Fabregas moments. That goal in the North London derby where we hadn’t even finished celebrating the Robin van Persie opener, when he waltzed through their defence to make 2-0.
Have a great Sunday everyone.
