So he asked to go watch some ****ty car race when his team was playing, what sort of 'captain' does that? Getting rid of him was the only option left, where we ****ed up was not replacing him. We tried to get Mata or Cazorla in that summer and we failed. That's where we messed up.
Horse Sh1t? I'll let the numbers do the talking, in his final season at Arsenal: Assists: 17 Goals: 9 Mind you, he was injured during parts of that season. But **** me, 17 assists for a player that felt like he's a hostage eh????? Btw, just for the record, that assist stat made him one of the best creative midfielders in England, and Europe. In fact it was his THIRD BEST ever creative season for us, in his 7 starting seasons, wow, imagine that, his final season for us, when his head was supposedly not in it, he produces his 3rd best creative performance for us. Not only was it his third best creative performance for us, it also happened to be his 3rd best goal scoring season! So you'd think that a players head who wasn't in it, would be producing worst stats that ever before, but instead, he's playing great football for us, even better than some other previous seasons when he was 'committed' to the cause.
We failed to get Mata because we were too cheap, let's get that story right, even his dad was out saying he was going to Arsenal, everything was set, till greedy cheap Arsenal decided to not pay up.
And Wenger did well to keep him for that season. But doing that for two seasons in a row was out of the question, because Fabregas had set his mind on leaving. In the pre-season we sold him he looked like a man that would have done anything to get out of the club. In the end, he took a wage cut to leave. Him returning to his boyhood club was always on the cards and we actually in the end kept him for a season more than we were expected to. Looking back, I am surprised that the board had the balls to refuse to sell like they did in 2010.
He had a long term contract, so we had to do nothing, and as Metallica say, "And nothing else matters",
Back in the real world, when your 'captain' and star player decides that he no longer wants to stay, then you have very options left. Selling him and then buying his replacement was what we should have done, not buy his replacement in a years time.
Chelsea got involved and it was turning into a bidding war. Do you honestly think we could have beaten Chelsea in a bidding war over Mata?
Chelsea got involved after we began to be cheap which caused negotiations to stall and so Chelsea move in once, simple, that's what usually happens.
I agree, he shouldn't have done that, but that also doesn't= it was a good decision to sell him, the 2 don't mix, and quite frankly, is another stupid argument being made by desperate fans to try and come up with every excuse in the book to justify bad footballing decisions. I've already shown the footballing stats showing Fabregas was a very effective key player for us that season, end of story, that's all that matters. Furthermore, his departure also hurt the team as well, and these are the points that only matter. So you're point about him missing the final game, a useless game, of which he was injured anyway, bares ZERO relevance to everything else, it's just a red herring. And if you're so keen on such arguments, then I expect you to tell Santos to **** off and that he shouldn't ever play for Arsenal again after exchanging jersey's with RVP of all players, during half time, in a game we were losing, and in a very important game against Manunited, common now, be consistent, would any true loyal passionate player do something as stupid as that? Something tells me, since you're so inconsistent, that you're not willing to follow on your argumentation now.