gunners' rock: where every game is an away game

Because I need him to, that’s why, and it doesn’t seem as though I’m the only one who feels this way. Rumours have started over the last couple of days that Fabregas may be leaving the Nou Camp. We all know he left us a couple of years back to return to his boyhood and hometown club, and though this hurt like hell at the time, I was able to put it behind me somewhat because of the nature of the move. To some degree I understand any player who makes the decision to leave a club if there is a chance of winning trophies elsewhere and we have to admit it, whether we want to or not, that with the teams we’ve had in recent seasons, we just weren’t going to win any silverware.

I don’t mean to be all doom and gloom about it; no, we’ve come close to one trophy anyway, which we lost to Birmingham, making the tears fall from the eyes of our young, passionate English midfielder. The facts are, however, that we’ve just not had winners in the squad. Some blogs and twitter users would mention over and over again last season that the only person who won anything with the club was van Persie, and that was back in 2005. There was just not a culture of winning at the club, if you want to look at it that way. The manager seemed to be primarily concerned with signing young no-name players and selling off the decent player stock we had, while the Arsenal board was arguably worse, what with their lack of providing funds for transfer deals and seeming to miss the point completely when it came to the direction the club should be taking. With these points in mind, it’s easy to see why van Persie and, before him Cesc Fabregas, left Arsenal. New acquisitions in the last year have been positive in that Giroud, Cazorla, and Podolski have all won titles and other awards with their former clubs.

But now the word is that Cesc may be leaving Barcelona. The media have suggested that Manchester United seems to be a likely destination, but it was reported today that he appeared on a Spanish radio station and denied any claims that he would move to United. The reliability of this piece of news is something that I cannot confirm, but personally I believe he wouldn’t want to join the same lot as van Persie. Cesc has reiterated time and time again since leaving us that he loves Arsenal, and I think if he made a move to the Premier League that it would be back to us. Wenger has shown over the last season that he means business: even with limited funds and bargain buys, he can keep the team in the top four (and arguably more importantly above Spurs). He’s putting faith in primarily German and Spanish internationals, which is a good strategy since these countries have the two best teams in world football at the moment. This shows some ambition, I believe, but also there’s the mysterious massive “transfer war chest” the internet has been getting on about and the fact that Gazidis made mention of improving beyond just CL qualification next season. All these points combined might be enough to draw Fabregas back to the Gunners, that is of course if he leaves Catalonia at all.

And to get back to the main point of this post, I need Cesc to come back home. I try to stay away from the transfer rumour mill each year, but there’s little avoiding it this time around. If there’s an announcement that he is going to join Arsenal again, or that he says he would like to, I couldn’t bare to miss out on it when it happened. I think for many gooners out there Cesc is still somewhat of a mysterious character, almost like an old lover you can’t get over because there’s the acknowledgement that deep down you want him back, to experience the highs with him, that he’s your best chance of success and a happy future.

Why can’t I quit you, Cesc? Maybe I don’t want to at all.

Cheers.