Heartwrecker, heartwrecker, make me delight

Over the years of this blog the internet has, from time to time, gone crazy mental with rumour and speculation. Yesterday was another one of those days.

The easy thing to do is strip down to your virtual boxer shorts and jump right in, splashing gayly around with all those who are butterflying up and down the world wide pool of doom. Embrace the madness, think of the worst possible scenario, then imagine something even worse again and get stuck into the blogging. That is the easy thing to do. 

And I won't lie and say I've never succumbed. I have, now and again, got caught up things with hindsight I wish I hadn't. I may not have done a running bomber into the pool while the lifeguard wasn't looking but I certainly swam a few lengths (but took a crafty slash before I got out to assuage my guilt). 

I won't lie this time and say it hasn't crossed my to talk about the scenario we're being bombarded with, that of Cesc leaving us for Barcelona, and go full on Johnny Doomalot. Like all of you I find the prospect of him leaving hard to take. The idea that he might actually want to leave is even worse because it would say so much about where we are right now and how much we've got to do to make things better. It would be a huge blow to the team, to the manager, to the fans and to everybody associated with Arsenal.

I know many people will look at the story, the origin of it, and dimiss that Balague chap as a man who talks an awful lot but doesn't get much right. He claims so much inside info and well placed sources but I'm sure if you went back through his archives and his appearances on Sky he gets much more wrong than he does right. On the other side of the coin though there's the whole stopped clock being right twice a day thing. If you fling enough shit eventually some of it will stick. And in this case I'm led to believe there's more to this story than newspaper/smug pundit bullshit. 

Quite how much more I don't know because I haven't spoken to Cesc. And neither have any of the websites or newspapers or columns or blogs that claim to know what he's thinking, his emotional state or anything else. If he's spoken to Arsene Wenger then I'm pretty sure the details of that conversation have not been made public by either party. You might speculate that certain parties close to one of them might see some value in making information available. Whether that's to other football clubs or to journalists with ghastly beards, I can't say. If other football clubs were working in tandem with wispy bearded journalists to do the dirty work abroad that they're used to their own mouthpieces local newspapers doing then I can't say I would be hugely surprised.

However, the machinations behind the scenes, no matter how grubby, don't alter the fact that there is substance to the story. And in a week where the most exciting stories have been Chamakh and some Italian goalkeeper it's no wonder things have gone into overdrive.

Arsenal losing their best player, their captain, their talisman is wonderful stuff ... for everyone else. Headlines and column inches and opinion pieces and tabloid radio and everything else have gone into meltdown. I witnessed the most spiteful halfwits address their ire at the story to Cesc's sister who happily goes about her business on Twitter like any young lady. All of a sudden she had to deal with her brother being called a cunt and a traitor and an eruption of ludicrous, retarded, aggressive shite from people who call themselves Arsenal fans. Those people are a disgrace and I will not stand with any Arsenal fan who behaves like that. They are vermin.

And this is what they live for. The drama, the speculation, the transfer stories, the unsubstantiated stuff they can really get their teeth into. I think it's very much a symptom of the internet generation and it can be so ugly at times. There's little in the way of quality control. It used to be a case that you might say 'Well, it's in The Times so there's probably something to it'. Not any more. Nearly all the national papers compete with the worst kind of websites to ensure they get the most page views and advertising clicks. When the official Arsenal site has started their own transfer section then you know things have taken a turn for the worse.

I've said it before that Arseblog gets busier in the off-season. The only real conclusion I can draw from this is that there are more people interested in who we might sign or who we might sell than in our actual football. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's just a thing. And right now it's a thing about which we know very little.

Does Cesc want to leave? Perhaps. Has he told Arsenal Wenger face to face in an emotional meeting? How the fuck would I know but I'm sure if it happened it was probably a bit tough for both of them? Is it understandable that Cesc might want to leave? Sure. He's got his mates at Barcelona going around showing off their shiny league title medals and their shiny Champions League medal and he might look at that team and think he could play a big part in helping them win more shiny medals. And he might, and I will stress that I'm speculating here and in no way speaking on behalf of the man, look at our team, our miserable capitulation at the end of the season, and question whether he can win shiny medals with us.

I think we've been a bit unlucky, to be honest. If Cesc had stayed fit until the end of the season I think things might be a bit different. For a start he wouldn't have been back home in Barcelona with people in his ear, chipping away at him about how awesome shiny medals are and how he could win shiny medals if he just came to play for them. I also think our end of season wouldn't have been so shit. I don't think we'd have lost to Spurs, a draw at least, and I believe we would have beaten Wigan and Blackburn - yes, even with Fabianski. The season, while still trophyless, would have been viewed as more positive than negative, it doesn't end it on such a bum note and you don't have to watch, while on crutches, some of your teammates just give up. So in that sense we've been unlucky with the circumstances. 

It doesn't mean the final month of the season is what anything is being based on, just that it surely didn't help. The other thing to bear in mind is that even if Cesc has told the manager he wants to go, we don't have to sell him. Arsene has convinced Thierry to stay and Vieira to stay. In both cases they had fairly dismal final campaigns with the club. Maybe this could be third time lucky, maybe there'll be assurances of top signings and maybe that will be enough.

However, it all boils down to how much Barcelona want him. Sure, they want him enough to get minge-faced journos to stir up the pot and to do some of the groundwork, perhaps in a way which might set some of the fans against him. I'm sure, vermin aside, no Arsenal fan has anything but the highest regard for a man who has played nearly 300 games for us at the age of 23. Yet pot stirring aside, here's are two facts which cannot be disputed. One, Cesc Fabregas is probably the best young central midfield player in the world. Two, he is on a long term contract at Arsenal.

I heard it said yesterday that Barcelona aren't willing to do any deal worth more than £30m (that would include player swap deals too) as they feel Cesc was a Barcelona youth product so they shouldn't have to pay any more. Here's the news, Barcelona, where Cesc played his youth football is entirely irrelevant. He plays for Arsenal now and he's got a contract with us. If you really, really want him, and if Arsenal are prepared to sell him, you will have to pay what he's worth. At 23 he's got a minimum of 7 or 8 seasons at the very top. Minimum. He is the best young central midfield player in the world. If Man City are reportedly willing to pay £24m for James Milner you'd want to be doubling that, at least, if you want to buy Cesc Fabregas.

In this regard Arsenal hold a good hand and I'm sure we'll do our best to hang on to him. I know, I know, when a player wants to leave and all that, but that doesn't mean you have to crumble on the price. I'm going with an if again - if Cesc wants to leave and if Barcelona really want to sign him, they're going to have to pay the market price. I know that, you know that, and that means Barcelona and Cesc know that. Don't believe any stories which say Cesc has made demands of Arsenal, he has too much respect for the club, for the fans and for Arsene to do that.

If Barcelona think they can get him on the cheap because of his 'DNA' then they're mistaken. If they don't come up with the readies then Cesc will stay at Arsenal. I do like the way papers report 'all that's left is to agree a fee' as if this were some mere trifle. It's not, it's a fucking huge part of it, and if Barcelona want to treat it as a triviality they might find things don't go the way they want (and what does it say to the player who they supposedly want so badly?).

I'm not going to sit here this morning and write about Cesc in the past tense. There'll be no footballing obituary, no condemnation of the manager, no gnashing of teeth or wailing, because nothing's happened yet. The pool of doom is full of what-ifs and ruination sharks and armadillos of armageddon. And the amount of information we have is minimal. While I know there's substance to the story we have nothing from Cesc, nothing from Arsene, nothing from the club, and only guesswork and deliberately planted information from concerned parties.

Sure, the idea of him leaving is heartbreaking, and for a 38 year old man to be heartbroken over a footballer is something that I'm sure warrants some kind of analysis, but until it happens, until there's that fateful announcement on arsenal.com (taking pride of headline place above a story about Sebastian Frey for us signing because some blog called 'TransferTits' wrote about it), I'm going to try and rise above it all a little bit.

It's not going to be easy, it's pervasive and hard to ignore, but I don't think any of us can speak about it properly without a bit more information. The thing we all fear might very well come to pass, we may be subjected to yet another drawn out, painful transfer saga, and if it does happen we can join together in a mass outbreak of tears and heartache and best crying ever.

Until then I think we need to step back and wait until something actually does happen. At that point I think it'll be entirely reasonable to look at where we are, what it means, the reasons why, how we react and everything else. They are gesturing at me from the deep end of the pool of doom, the water's lovely they say, but I'll save my crafty pissing for now.

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In other news, well, there is no other news. Leopold returns with another episode of the real ANR - You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar. 

I am expecting an onslaught of Cesc related stories in the coming days. First up will be the 'Wenger to convince Cesc with signings' story in which some newspaper will produce a list of players which will apparently be used to tempt the him to stay. Then there'll be the 'Barca to offer Pablo, Hablo and Diablo' as part of the Cesc deal, and on and on it will go. 

Fun times, ladies and gentlemen. Fun fuckin times.