Gunnerrific

The writing is on the wall. Barcelona want Cesc. Cesc wants Barcelona. This is the way it was a year ago, this is still the way it is now. Wenger managed to persuade Fabregas to stay for just one more season, but given the same-old lackluster could-have-been-a-trophy performance, he has no reason to stay.

We have lost a lot of players to Barcelona. I have no doubt in my mind that Cesc will be the next. I have resigned myself to it, not just because we are seeing the same patterns in the media from all sides on this story, but also because Cesc himself has said he wants to go back to Barcelona. Qualifying such a statement by saying “but I’m still under contract with Arsenal and the World Cup is next” doesn’t really mean anything.

The more important question that Arsenal supporters should be asking at this point is how exactly the team is going to look next year without Fabregas. Who else can Wenger bring in?

Barcelona are now our most bitter of foreign rivals. I can’t wait until we play them again, when we actually have a team without any injuries.

Unfortunately that is unlikely to happen given our penchant for easy knocks and breaks.

I will say though that given the number of injuries we had, we did surprisingly well. Some may say that 4-1 is anything but ‘surprisingly well’. I would say that we practically fielded our B team, and against the best team in the world 4-1 is pretty damn respectable.

More to come.