Jeremy Cunnington
Judging by the recent lack of action, Arsenal’s summer transfer activities have been incredibly badly handled so far. If Arsenal is to have anything like a successful season it really needs to start to up its game in both divesting players who do not want to be there or should not be there and getting in players that would augment our team This should start with the sale of Cesc.
Let’s be clear on two points, Barcelona’s behaviour has been awful and Cesc is worth far more than Barcelona seem willing/able to pay. But enough is enough and we should just sell him for whatever the new increased offer is as it is in danger of damaging our season before it has barely started.
Arsenal is in a weak position. The player seems desperate to leave (reportedly selling his house etc) and has been for the past 15 months. Yet the only club he wants to go to are cash strapped, partly thanks to overpaying on deals it did in the past (eg Overmars and Petit for £30m), but also because they know they are in such a strong position over the deal so are offering below what Cesc is worth.
As we saw last season there is no point keeping a player who is does not want to be there. As Fabregas showed last season, even a player who is as professional as Cesc can't perform at his peak if his heart is not in it.
There is a precedent for how a long drawn out transfer sagas with a playing wanting to leave can damage a team’s start to the season, witnessed by Berbatov transfer to the Manchester Utd in 2008. This helped ruin Tottenham's season then (happy days!).
Tottenham let the transfer saga drag on right to the end of the transfer window, reportedly upsetting the squad and limiting the opportunities to find a replacement, for an extra £1-2 million. The saga was at least partly responsible for leaving them bottom after about 8 games with two points, Ramos without a job and more importantly, Tottenham no chance of any European pay day the following season. The equivalent to this (ie out of the Champions League, a couple of league defeats) is what could happen to Arsenal.
So please Arsenal, take the money, get the painful saga over with and accept that we didn't do as well out of this as we would have liked. As in life, you win some (as we did with the ridiculous fees for Adebayor, Toure, Anelka and Overmars and Petit) and you lose some such, as with Cesc.
Although one way of mitigating the lower fee would be to ensure there is a large sell on fee if Cesc is ever sold by Barcelona, as we do for our younger players who leave the club, so if he is ever sold on we will still benefit. In any case, whatever we get for him will still be a huge profit on what we paid for him.
