Arsenal selling Fabregas great bit of business ?

I did a thread about can you keep an unhappy player awhile back . Fabregas has wanted to join Barcelona for the last 2-3 seasons and now has done this fulfilling a dream while apparantly not destroying his relationship with Arsenal .

It's far to early to judge but things may not work out for him at Barca , he may not get the game time he wants , if a new coach comes in he may not fit in with their plans, which may make him realise what he had at Arsenal.

My point, Is this is a good deal for Arsenal they have got 35 million for him and had a clause's inserted that they can buy him back for the same fee 35 million and that if Barcelona sell him to anyone else Arsenal get half the fee .

what do you think ?

They had to sell him, but in the circumstances they had to sell under market value.

Selling your best player for under market value is never a great bit of business imo.

This is a terrible deal for Arsenal.
The fee is £25m plus £800k a year for next 5 years plus £6m if Barca win 1 x Champions Lge and 2 x La Ligas.
The value of the player was never fully market tested because he insisted he only wanted to play for Barca, so the opportunity for a Chelsea/Man City to come in and pay the going rate for a world class 24 year old didn't exist.
Having pushed for the deal for so long he would look utterly stupid if he publicly regrets it ever, so he won't be going anywhere until this contract expires at the earliest.
The half of future sell on fees is a complete red herring as the situation will never exist.
At the moment all Arsenal are guaranteed is £25m plus smaller annual sums over 5 years, if Torres is worth £50m, Carroll worth £35m and Berbatov worth £35m then Arsenal have been well and truly raped, and I'm afraid it's the player that must be blamed for that

I agree Arsenal had no choice but to sell to Barca as Fabregas wouldn't go to anyone else . To much player power .

If he stays at Barca for the length of his contract they will win those trophies to get add ons , and at 24 years old i dont think you can say they wont ever sell him . Guardiola has pushed for the transfer yet every year its banded about hes leaving so whos to say an in coming coach wants Fabregas when a Man City maybe willing to spend big on him (150 million buyout clause) .

£25m + a further £10m spread out over five years is not the players true market value - Cescs attitude prevented Arsenal from selling an asset for the best price possible, and an asset the club have invested heavily in over many years. Barca made sure they took advantage of this, so much so that when they realised they couldn't meet his true value all the other players and officials roundly called on Arsenal to 'set him free', free from the club that honed his skills and made him a multi-millionaire, the club he was virtually striking from in the end. Barca have proved themselves to be classless yet again (Thierry Henry all over again) and Cesc isn't blameless, Arsenal are millions out of pocket as a result of his actions.
So I agree, too much player power

I suppose it's never a great piece of business selling your most influential player for a knock down fee before he has even reached his peak years.

It will be interesting to see how he fits into the Barca team and more specifically their way of playing. I have said in another thread that, in my opinion, he is more suited to the English game than he is to the total-football of CF Barcelona.

At least we have closure on this whole tiresome episode now!

I wouldn't say it's a great bit of business, but it's far from terrible.

Arsenal have held off the overtures of the biggest club in the world for a couple of seasons now, despite the player wanting to leave. Fabregas didn't want to go anywhere else, so Arsenal couldn't get competitive bids to increase the price. Nonetheless, they've secured a decent price for him, especially since Fabregas spent a lot of last season injured. Further, they've sold him to a foreign club, so it wont' affect their league charge, and even if they do play Barca, it's likely Fabregas will be on the bench. They also have young midfielders coming through who can take his place in Ramsey and Wilshere - players who gained experience last season.

They now have £30m-odd to go and spend to strengthen other positions that need it more.

How many Arsenal fans would truly be that sad to lose Fabregas and Nasri if it means they could bring in (for example) Hazard, Mertesacker and Mata?

beadle - how much do you think Man City or Chelsea would have been prepared to pay for Cesc ? One of these clubs paid £50m for a forward and the other offered £100m for a midfielder 2 years ago.
Neither have any financial boundaries and have proved numerous times they will pay any amount to get what they want.

If you owned a car with a book value of £10k but only told one of your mates that you wanted to sell it so you accepted his £6k offer, would that be good business ?

If that car wouldn't perform anywhere close to the same level as it had before then yes.

Grizzly wrote:beadle - how much do you think Man City or Chelsea would have been prepared to pay for Cesc ? One of these clubs paid £50m for a forward and the other offered £100m for a midfielder 2 years ago.
Neither have any financial boundaries and have proved numerous times they will pay any amount to get what they want.

If you owned a car with a book value of £10k but only told one of your mates that you wanted to sell it so you accepted his £6k offer, would that be good business ?

I understand your point. But do you think either would pay £50m to Arsenal for Fabregas? Top clubs in the same league almost never deal with each other. And when they do, they very rarely pay over the odds, because then they're actually strengthening their competitor. Torres was an anomaly.

Then factor in that Fabregas only wanted to go to Barcelona. That's where the car analogy falls down. I can sell a car to anyone. Bear in mind that Fabregas has essentially paid £8m out of his own pocket for the transfer - that's how badly he wanted it.

I simply don't think Arsenal could have got much more money for Fabregas even if he had have been willing to go anywhere else. And to do so would have involved strengthening a domestic competitor. To that end, it's not terrible business.

invincibleILeak (CL-6WF) wrote:If that car wouldn't perform anywhere close to the same level as it had before then yes.

Fabregas is 24, every chance his best years are ahead of him !

I think it was pretty poor business - but as has been said he was only ever going to go to Barca or he would stay at Arsenal - Wenger battled hard to keep him but in the end he had to go.

What I'm annoyed about is that everytime we sell one of our best players we get raped over the price - Henry went when he was arguably the best striker in the world and went for something like £15m, Cole went for free, Toure was £7m wasn't it? Viera £17.5m when he was admired as one of the best box to box midfielders around. The only person we got quite a bit of money for was Ade, and even then in comparision to other transfers Man C were making it wasn't ridiculous.

We should have gotten so much more from these and Fab, and we desperately need the money unlike Man U, Chelsea, Man C, Real Madrid (even Barca will be bailed out by the government if they get in too much trouble).

Arsenal's midfield needs a makeover at this point and it won't happen by going for youth bargains again, they really need a midfielder like Gattuso/Van Bommel who got the right mentality for the league, not like Song and Diaby.

he had to sell fabregas no matter what, but Wenger is too dumb to get a deal sorted for an experienced campaigner, he will always be a 2nd grade manager.

I don't thinK Van Bommel or Gattuso are even close to what Arsenal should be looking for, maybe in the mould of those players, but certainly not them two specifically, far too old and are also unproven in the Premier League.

I get the feeling Wenger will buy a CB and a midfielder of some sort - would like him to buy Parker and play Ramsey and Nasri if we keep him in the Fab role, then Parker and Wilshire, and Song and Diaby can be the more defensive midfielders coming from deep.

I hope he buys a LB or RB but can't see it.

Arsenal's midfield will still be fin and be creative; as long as Wilshere and Ramsey step up.

Perhaps the money should be used to strengthen other areas. They are at least one players short in defense; Jenkinson might end up playing against Liverpool. So an experienced Premiership centre back should be a priority. Wenger seems to fancy Jagielka; although I think Cahill is a better fit and would be a longer term option.

Another striker would also be helpful. Van Persie is excellent; be can't be relied upon due to his injury record. Chamakh is not good enough as cover.

Beyond this, immediately securing Van Persie and Walcott on long term contracts to build for the future would also be very helpful to the team.