Perry Groves has claimed that the Gunners are no longer reliant on Cesc Fabregas and should look to sell the Spaniard if he wants to leave the North London club in the summer.
The former Arsenal winger believes that the Gunners should allow Fabregas to leave if he wishes to, and is adamant that the club would cope with the potential loss.
Groves told talkSPORT’s Andy Goldstein and Jason Cundy yesterday:
‘If he [Fabregas] wants to go and he makes it clear that he wants to go, then I would be of the opinion that they let him go and Arsenal get their £35-40m for him. Most Arsenal fans are fed up with the will-he-won’t-he go, they had it with Thierry Henry for a few seasons before he left.’
The Englishman then suggested that the transfer funds made available through the potential Fabregas sale should be used to strengthen the squad’s weaker areas – the defence and midfield:
‘You go out and buy a dominate centre-half and combative midfielder because yesterday [against Manchester United] you saw that Arsenal can manage without him.’
‘With the emergence of Jack Wilshere, Nasri can play in the centre and Aaron Ramsey is back. At the beginning of last season I would have kept him at all costs but Fabregas has been Arsenal’s fourth or fifth best player this year.’
‘Arsenal fans would say he’s been fantastic but we understand you haven’t won any trophies. If you want to go and play for Barcelona then you go with our blessing.’
‘It all depends if Cesc really wants to go or not.’
I couldn’t agree more with Grovesy. If Fabregas, or in fact any other Arsenal player doesn’t want to be, or is uncertain about remaining at the club, then they should just leave. Of course whether the midfielder wants to stay or go is still uncertain at this point. However, many believe that this could be the Spaniard’s last season at the Emirates. If this proves to be the case then so be it.
Of course the possible departure of Fabregas would be a huge blow to Arsenal, but we have lost better players in the past and survived. If we can obtain a huge amount of cash from the sale of our captain, then like Grovesy said, we should look to strengthen our weaker areas of our squad, and evidently, look to the future.
Are the Gunners no longer reliant on Cesc Fabregas is a debateable issue though, and as such, I’ll will leave the fans reading this to decide on the matter. However, I truly believe that we can cope without him, and have done so in recent weeks.
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Another knee-jerk reaction from another ex-gooner. While I agree that nobody is bigger than the club, I’m pretty sure had we’d lost or even drawn with Man U, Mr Groves would be saying the opposite.
I think we could cope without Cesc, but I don’t think we should let him go unless we’re offered a really good deal.
But the fact is we won.
As much as i’ll love to see cap fab in an arsenal shirt next season, it is obevious his mind is no more with arsenal unless wenger can convince him and he wenger see that he fab is ready to give his 100 persent to the club. Fab should be sold if the price is right.
Let him go, he’s not a proper capitain, his career will be plagued with hamstring injuries and he obviously wants to go to barca. So sell him for a good price and go and buy a proper captain like Arteta, buy another CB like mertesacker, get rid of all dead weight and maybe even buy someone like benzema (as if that would ever happen I know) and another CDM like M’Vila
Can’t understand why everyone thinks he’s worth £35/40m. Kaka went to Real Madrid for £65m and there’s few reasons why we should sell Fab for less than £60m. Barcelona can only afford £35m, but Madrid would surely pay £50m+ for him.
In my opinion I think we should sell him. He clearly doesn’t look interested when he plays for Arsenal and probably wished he signed for Barca last season. If we look at his overall performance in the last couple of months, he has been below par.
I do agree with what ‘gooner’ says, £35-£40 million is too cheap to let a player like him go. If Arsenal do offload him, they should be looking to offload him for around £50-£60 million. Ok, peolpe may argue that he has not been at his best this season but we all know what he is capable of. Also he is 24 today, so considering his age and his talent, I think ‘gooner’ and myself are right to say he should be sold between the £50-£60 million mark.
Anyway if he goes we can only wish him the best of luck as he has been a great player for Arsenal. At the end of the day he wants to win trophies and we can’t blame him for wanting to be successful.