Fabregas: Barcelona have a lot to lose; Arsenal have nothing to gain

If Barcelona want to continue winning trophies and playing the kind of football that they have played for the past 3 years then they quite simply desperately need a player like Fabregas – in fact there is no substitute, they need Fabregas specifically. In that case Fabregas is worth more than €60 million to them.

The bummer for Barcelona is that Arsenal has little to gain from receiving anything less than €60M from Barcelona for Fabregas. I would go further by saying that even €60M is not much of a gain to Arsenal if they are to lose Fabregas.

Teams that play like Barcelona and Arsenal are finely tuned machines. They are like Formula 1 cars. They are reduced to mediocrity if a simple part is missing but when all the components are there, such are the teams that can do an entire season unbeaten or outplay every opponent on the planet like Barca has done recently. Teams like Arsenal and Barcelona do not win the league every season, but when they do, they do so in spectacular style. A Land Rover can chug along with missing parts and little elegance. Like Chelsea, Man Utd or Inter, they can go year after year and be competitive and win some trophy or the other but they are rarely spectacular.

Barcelona are much closer to hitting mediocrity than most people realise. Their team is in transition. Xavi is not the player he was 2 years ago and Iniesta is not half as impressive when you take out Touré or Marco Senna. In fact, Fabregas has dealt and managed a lot more than Iniesta and Xavi have ever had to. Eto'o isn't there anymore and Ibrahimovic is not versatile enough to cope with the absence of either or both of Xavi and Iniesta. At the Emirates in the Champions league and throughout that period when Iniesta was out and Touré was suspect, Barcelona were surprisingly vulnerable in spite of being spectacular in parts. Barcelona needs to rejuvenate their team and Fabregas is the only plug-and-play player that can make their transition easier in the area where their game is more dependent.

Fabregas is the only player I can think of that can rejuvenate the Barca midfield and allow the 23 year old Messi to continue to grow without interruption. Just like Bergkamp allowed Henry to grow in his vital period without interruption. Had Bergkamp been replaced by just about anybody else, Henry would not have grown the way he did. The noise from Barcelona players around Fabregas (and it is unusual for so many players in a team to be so vocal about a potential transfer) is a recognition of the fact that they know how vulnerable they will get next season if they cannot find plug-and-play players in key roles.

Arsenal have been in the longest transition I have ever known. A lot of people think Arsenal has no world class players other than Vermaelen and Fabregas. My answer is that you don't need world class players to be a world class football team. Germany's world cup team only needed a few. The unbeaten Arsenal team had Henry, Lauren, Gilberto, Ljungberg, Píres, Ashley Cole, Campbell, Keown, Touré. All of those players had been criticized one way or another the season before. I would argue that the only recognised world class players in that team at the start of the crucial two year stretch were Patrick Vieira and Dennis Bergkamp. By the end of that two year period, Píres, Henry, Ashley Cole, Ljungberg had become world class. People tend to be recognised as world class when they have just proven it, not before.

The way I see it, Nasri, Song, van Persie, Arshavin, Chamakh and Jack Wilshere have the potential to be world class over the next year or two. You can still have Eboué, Diaby, Sagna, Clichy, Eduardo, Bendtner etc just like we had Touré, Lauren, Gilberto, Parlour etc. that can make the numbers.

So what could €60M buy Arsenal? If I was looking at the market for a replacement for Fabregas, I would look at Modric, Wilshere, Nasri, Iniesta, Ozil (unproven) and maybe Gorcouff. Arsenal already has two of the players in that list. Or Arsenal could use that to buy more players for defence or the defensive midfield. But with Wenger's current finances, he has already signed one defender and is looking at one more. He has bought a proven striker (a very good one. If you have not seen Chamakh in action you can take my word for it), he needs cover for defensive midfield and we know he is looking for a keeper. So Wenger already has the funds to buy what he needs without having to sell Fabregas so there is very little incentive for Arsenal to sell Fabregas.

In other words, even if Barca bid €60M for Fabregas, there is little Arsenal has to gain by accepting it. So Barca are desperate for Fabregas and Arsenal don't need their money. In such situations, it is down to the player. What should the player do?

As I have always said, a foreign player that comes from a country that has a good league did not grow up supporting or dreaming to play for a team in England. Spanish and Italian players grow up supporting their own great teams in their leagues and dreaming to play for that team. Latin American, Portuguese and French players grow up watching and admiring the Spanish and Italian leagues and dream of playing in their favourite teams in that league. Basically, an English club with a great player from Spain, Italy, Latin America, Portugal have to accept that their talents dream of playing somewhere else. It's no offence to the premier league, it is just natural. If you have a Spanish player that is world class, then you will have to prepare to lose them at some point.

Fabregas would like to play for Barcelona – if that surprises you then you overestimate the premiership. Fabregas will go at some point. The question is whether now is a good time or not for Fabregas.

Fabregas is 23 so he has time. He is Arsenal captain and has won nothing at Arsenal. If I were Fabregas, I would consider leaving Arsenal after winning something. I would look at Arsenal as a team that is on the way up and consider Barcelona as a team that was its peak 18months ago. David Villa can replace and maybe give a little more than Eto'o but he does nothing to compensate for the decline of Xavi and the Barca midfield. If Arsenal don't hit the big time in one year then I would leave to join David Villa who would then be 29, Iniesta at 27, Messi at 25 and crucially be able to start a game because Xavi would be 32 by then.

If I were Fabregas, I would look at history and recognise that with ball-playing, elegant teams, the time at the top is small. He can enjoy that time at the top with Arsenal and then go to Barcelona later to enjoy the next wave when Messi is taking the next step, when the team has learned to play with Villa, when Pique is mature, when Bojan has taken Zlatan's place, when Xavi is out of the way, when a better replacement for Touré has been found, when he has won something with Arsenal.

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