Surely you wouldn't suggest that you're similar in abillity to Barca after beating them once? Fabregas was highly rated and you poached him because of the restrictions in Spain on offering contracts to youngsters. Totally agree on Barca acting very unproffesionally throughout the speculation, though.
Fabregas just turned 16 when he signed for us ffs. He always had the talent proven by his brilliant perrfomances at the u17 euro and world cup in 2003. Barca couldnt convince him to stay and Cesc clearly thought that Arsenal would be the better choice. Undrr Wenger he got the physical edge to the game and also developed as a man by proving himself so early in a foreign country with different culture and much different playing style. At Barca he would taken a lot longer to break into the team and would never be the player he is today. If you hear the name Raúl, which club do you connect him with? Who 'nutured' his talent? Would you say Real Madrid and ignore the fact that he actually played for Atlético in his Youth?
You hit it on the head there mate. They really dragged on the whole Cesc saga and when Arsenal relented, they offered £13m less!!!! The bloody cheek of it i say! The market rate for Cesc is around the £40m mark but Arsenal were forced to sell after all the tapping up. Disgraceful behaviour from the best club in the world.
Fabregas would fetch at least £50m from many clubs. The price - £40m was set in an attempt to push the tight Barca into a reasonable fee. But we failed in that attempt.
Song ? since when was he good ? A slow, technically inept fouler who is not especially good at anything at all ?? Name another top team he would be first choice in. RVP was quality when he came to us, just injury prone. Walcott has hardly progressed, a speed merchant, not as good as Lennon who at least has end product and can pick players out when he crosses. Ramsey was a product of Cardiff. So I ask again, who have Arsenal developed. I'll be generous and give you Szczesny .. but on the other hand I'll take that away with Flappyhandski ! I'm Arsenal through and through old man, don't get it twisted, but I am not blind or a sheep.
You can't compare Barca to Arsenal, for one thing, Barca represents a whole city whereas Arsenal is only 1 of many clubs residing in London. Also Arsenal simply cannot compete with Barca financially. If we were bankrolled by Barclays like they are by their local banks, then everything would be rosy here too. They have a huge debt, we don't.
Yup - Arsenal and Arsene had NOTHING to do with Fabregas' talent. The only idiot here is you and clearly you know NOTHING about football. The cream rises to the top, the best players at any team at ANY level of football will always stand out, Fabregas would've stood out at Accrington Stanley. Did Ferguson/Man U make Ronaldo ? Absolutely not. Learn to argue bloke.
So we've never tapped players up ? Oxlade-Chamberlain ?? Constant talk of Mata ? Constant talk of Cahill ? Jagielka ? How comes it's disrespectful or tapping up when other clubs do it to us but when we do it it is something else ?? Take off your Arsenal coloured glasses and admit we are not whiter than white.
I can handle that as an opinion, but the hysterical tripe spouted by most of the numpties on this board annoys me, some of you need to get a clue and stop being so biased. People were up in arms that Barton didn't get sent off, why should he have been, for picking the player up ?? Did he hit anyone ? But everyone forgets Song should've been sent of for stamping on Barton. Bunch of hypocrites.
In that case you have to hate Arsenal for Gervinho's diving and ill-dicipline, Diaby's ill-dicipline, RVP even admitting that he goes down if he feels the lightest of touches, same for Denilson, Wilshere talking on twitter about players that arsenal are linked with buying, Bendtner for being an all-out prick, etc
When did our players come out week in, week out saying we wanted them/how great they'd be/Arsenal DNA etc etc? Have we protracted the negotiations over 3 years in these cases? The stories you listed were nothing more than media tripe. I'm not suggesting Arsenal are innocent in the market as every club seems to dump on those smaller than them but you're making things up here.
Fair enough. People keep harping on about players Arsenal has developed, but like who ? Walcott, Diaby, Vela, Denilson, and Bendtner, what have they done ? What teams would they get into ? Fabregas was fantastic in his first 2 games that I remember him playing for Arsenal so you cannot tell me Arsene developed him.
Agreed we haven't developed enough talent through to first team football but we have still done pretty well, considering our size. If we had the entire London area to pick from for our youth academies, then we would be able to compete with Barca. Also the England football team would be better off for it. However i think you are wrong on Cesc not developing under us, he clearly has. Barca was where he learnt most of his trade, Arsenal was the finishing school. We gave him the oppurtunity to play first team football in a top European club, in the most competitive league in the world. He has learnt things that he wouldn't have in Spain. At the end of the day we gave him the opportunity and he stepped up to the plate, everything else is hypothetical.
Ok I'll put it another way, I'm sure we've all played football and we all played with a player who was pretty good. The manager/coach of that team were not professional, they didn't have any special coaching techniques. You cannot say these players were developed by anyone but themselves as a part of growing up and getting faster, stronger and more mature. I played for one of the best school football teams around at the time. We had Scottish, English and Welsh schoolboys in the team I played for during that time. The Scottish player was also on Chelsea's books, the English player was on Arsenal's books and was also the Arsenal schoolboy captain. We had players at other pro teams albeit not top division. Our school football manager knew nothing about football but according to your arguments, because he managed/coached them from the ages of 11 to 15, he was somehow instrumental in their development !! Bull crap ! The man was a dinosaur, a Philistine, he knew nothing about football or tactics. Fabregas would've flourished at any team in the league, even Stoke City.
Gooner91: do I smell a bit of anti-Spanish/catalán feeling here?!Or is it just coincidence that the players you "used to like actually" are all from elsewhere?
Are you really making the point that youth coaching doesn't matter? Then how come clubs who invest a lot of money in their facilities end up with the best prospects? Fluke? Coincidence?
It does matter but there are many factors into youth development, coaching techniques plays a big part and my argument is that Fabregas already had the tools for the job when he left Barcelona, he honed his skills at Arsenal. I believe he would've honed them anywhere because he was so good at 16 when he arrived anyway. The same goes for Wilshere. Wilshere was head and shoulders above his peers but didn't stand out when he played for the first team. 1 season later having had a spell at Bolton and he was the player we had hoped for. So using your argument it was Bolton who made him the player he was but actually all Wilshere needed was a run of first team games and he would've become the player he became irrespective of where he played those games.
