COMMENT: The Gunners have come face-to-face with many
a former hero in recent years but none will provide as much pain as
seeing their old skipper pulling the strings for Chelsea
By James Goldman
CHE
ARSOnce a Gunner always a Gunner. Whether the bond between Arsenal and Cesc Fabregas survives Sunday’s reunion will represent an irrelevant subplot should the Spaniard deliver a painful dose of what-might-have-been with a match-winning performance.
Arsenal’s long-suffering fans should really be desensitised to the sight of a former hero biting the hand that used to feed them by now, but the prospect of Fabregas pulling the midfield strings in Chelsea blue will trigger unrivalled levels of regret and envy, as well as raise further questions over the direction the club is heading and those who make the key decisions.
Emmanuel Adebayor, Samir Nasri and Robin van Persie have all, in the face of significant provocation it must be said, revelled in the role of pantomime villain, celebrating goals and titles as a means of justifying their various defections.
Fabregas, too, is no angel. The manner in which he engineered a move back to Barcelona highlighted certain foibles that are also apparent in the confrontational, borderline arrogant, way in which he plays his football.
However, when Fabregas lines up for Chelsea, a sight that the player himself recently described as unthinkable a few years ago, he will take on the role of the jilted former lover rather than Judas, which only adds to the complex and conflicting mixture of emotions that will come to the boil at Stamford Bridge this weekend.
Despite his Spanish roots and the virtual downing of tools that preceded his return to Barcelona, for many of their fans Fabregas, the jewel at the centrepiece of Wenger’s devotion to project youth, effortlessly marrying the combative and competitive instincts of the 'Invincibles' with the aesthetic attributes more commonly associated with Wenger’s sides, he remains intrinsically Arsenal.
Still, Fabregas is unlikely to avoid facing a barrage of insults from a section of the support that once worshipped his every move but, ignoring tribal allegiances, most of the abuse he is likely to encounter is born out of frustration, not, as in the cases of Van Persie in particular, unadulterated hatred.
Van Persie could not have expected anything less once he plunged the knife into the manager who had schooled him for eight years with an open letter that, more than two years on from its publication, must still rankle with Wenger.
Adebayor and Nasri invited invective with antagonistic goal celebrations and constant sniping. Fabregas, by contrast, ended up at Chelsea almost by accident rather than design after Arsenal passed up the opportunity to re-sign him.
"Changing clubs is part of the game and people must remember it was Arsenal who didn't take up the buy-back option for me. What am I going to do - retire? No way," he said last week with a succinct elegance and pinpoint accuracy that mirrors the form which has seen him amass six league assists already for his new club.
"I wanted to keep playing football, enjoying myself and my career and I felt that joining Chelsea was the best option for me. There would have been a reaction wherever I had gone.
"If I had moved to Manchester United they would say, 'He's gone to a club that have been our big rivals for such a long time.' If it had been Manchester City they would have complained, too.
"Any team I would have gone to, apart from Arsenal, it would have been bad to them."
At the time, even if it appeared flawed, there was logic behind Wenger’s decision to pass on Fabregas. Arsenal, even despite the usual raft of injuries, are overstocked with creative midfielders, while the return of their former captain could potentially have disrupted the delicate balance of egos and personalities in a tightly knit dressing room.
Six weeks into the new campaign and how to include Fabregas in his team would surely represent a welcome headache. Aaron Ramsey is out until mid-November and had been struggling to replicate last season’s form anyway. Jack Wilshere continues to walk a fitness tightrope, Mesut Ozil has impressed only in patches while Santi Cazorla and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain have, predominantly, been used out wide.
Fabregas, meanwhile, has wasted little time adapting to his new surroundings, gleefully taking to the role of creator-in-chief in a fearsome looking Chelsea side.
There is a painful irony in the prospect of Fabregas, backed up by a robust defence and all-star attack, adding the titles his performances merited but were never rewarded with during his Arsenal career. That it is Jose Mourinho, Wenger’s arch nemesis, and Chelsea, the club who knocked Arsenal off their perch, that will benefit from Fabregas’s talents over the course of the peak years of his career makes the unjustness of it all even harder to compute.
Regardless of the result at Stamford Bridge, the sight of Fabregas revelling in his new environment will represent a painful experience but one Arsenal will have to get to get used to.
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