My Guilty Secret - I Still Love Cesc

There’s something that I really need to get off my chest this week, and it definitely won’t be an opinion that all Arsenal fans agree with, or can even understand, but it’s nonetheless true: I still love Cesc Fabregas. When I heard that he would be featuring on Monday Night Football last week, I made a conscious decision to stay away from the pre-match build-up. He’s our former captain, Arsene’s true protégé who flew the nest too early, and then found himself at Stamford Bridge when things got too difficult for him back ‘home’, and I’d be damned if I was going to hear what he had to say about this season, and inevitably, our title collapse.

However, whilst scrolling through Twitter before the game (I honestly can’t even remember who was playing, but hey, it’s football, so I was following it), I saw only positives about his punditry performance. Cesc was interesting, insightful, and lucid, possessing a ‘true’ understanding of the game, and, watching it back afterwards, I realised something terrible, I miss seeing him in an Arsenal shirt more than any other who has left our club on less-than-amicable terms.

This is partly, I think, down to a (very childish) feeling that Cesc was ‘my’ player growing up. I first heard the name Francesc Fabregas when he was wearing number 57 on his back, and making appearances in the Carling Cup, as it then was. Too young to stay up on weeknights for the whole game, my dad would print out the match report at full time, and make sure that it was stuck on my wall by my bed for me to obsess over in the morning.

More than once, I would wake up to read that this 16 year old was dominating games against those far his superior in terms of age and experience. I would always look for the name of Nwankwo Kanu (my favourite ever Arsenal player) first when I woke up, but Cesc soon became the second port of call, and it wasn’t long before he would truly be integrated into the first team set up, and ultimately earn the role of captain during my teenage years as I was really beginning to take a wider interest in Arsenal beyond just what happened on the pitch.

I’ve actually been incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to meet Cesc twice during his time in our part of London. The first was a very brief encounter at the Junior Gunners Christmas Party in our final season at Highbury. He was sat on a table with (I think) Jose Antonio Reyes and Manuel Almunia, and though I spoke to the former rather than Cesc himself, he seemed incredibly enthusiastic, with a huge grin on his face the whole time, clearly enjoying the experience of being surrounded not only by some of the greatest players Arsenal has ever seen, but also an adoring fanbase who he would get to know a lot better in subsequent years.

The second time was for the launch of the partnership between Great Ormond Street Hospital and Arsenal as their charity of the year in 2009/10. As a former patient of the hospital, I was chosen to be a part of the fundraising team that season, and was therefore welcomed along with the others onto the pitch at the Emirates during the Members’ Training Day to meet some of the players and pose for pictures.

At this time, Cesc was the newly appointed full-time captain of the club (though he had taken on the role formally in November the year before), again, clearly very proud in the role, but it must have been the case that new signings or exciting returning players like a certain Robin van Persie were the bigger attractions for us, because when we lined up for the photo, no one stood in front of Fabregas. In a moment that still embarrasses me to this day (but made Arsene laugh, so, swings and roundabouts) I shouted out ‘don’t worry Cesc, I’ll do it’, and proudly positioned myself next to the Arsenal captain.

Outside of these personal reasons for being a big fan of our former midfielder, I don’t think anyone could really dispute that Fabregas’ growth was one of the better things about our move to the Emirates. Despite what some now say, there was a genuine affinity for the club on his part, and I know that the feeling was mutual for many fans. Cesc is possibly the greatest example of Wenger’s desire to bring players through from the youth system to the first team at Arsenal, and it’s truly a shame that he only ever won the FA Cup and Community Shield with us.

That all being said, there was of course a dark side to the whole story. It was a fairly open secret throughout his time in North London that Fabregas was keen to return to his childhood club of Barcelona if he was ever given the chance, and who can blame him, given his roots there, and the club’s status as one of the biggest in the world. It was therefore probably not his motives, but rather the way in which he went about ‘engineering’ a move away from Arsenal that sat poorly with many fans. There were rumours at the time that the persistent hamstring injury (that he had, in all fairness, struggled with throughout his time at the club) was a convenient excuse to cover up a lack of willingness to play, and this certainly left a bitter taste when his departure was finally confirmed, coming at a time when perhaps we needed him most.

This all came to a head again in 2014, when it was clear that his time at Barcelona was coming to an untimely end, and Cesc began courting clubs in the Premier League once again, ultimately ending up at Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea. I have to say, when he was formally announced as a Chelsea player, the day of the start of the World Cup that year, I was absolutely furious. I couldn’t believe that a former captain of ours would go to Chelsea, I couldn’t believe that he’d be playing for Mourinho, and I couldn’t believe that we had let it happen. ‘Once a Gunner, always a Gunner’, or something like that…

The thing is though, that the latter statement there appears to have been the case; we seemingly passed on the opportunity to resign Cesc. According to rumours at the time, Fabregas was actually more than open to a switch back to the Emirates, but we took the view that there was no space for him in our squad, and this led him to look elsewhere in England for options. Now, I can’t personally vouch for the correctness of these assertions, the whole saga was steeped in confusion surrounding buy-back clauses and who had agreed to what and at which time, but I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if there was at least some element of truth in those claims.

I think this is why I find it impossible to hate Cesc, and why I am with those who controversially clap him when he returns to the Emirates with his new side. I hate seeing Fabregas line up in Chelsea blue as much as the next fan, I really do, but had the circumstances been just slightly different, we might have had him leading out our own team over the past few years once again, and we can’t just forget the legacy that he left at the club with the flick of a switch. Like and agree with it or not, his banner is on the Ken Friar Bridge at the Emirates for a reason.

There is too much sentimentality in football, I mean, just look at the fact that I’ve written over 1,000 words from a fairly emotional angle about a player who hasn’t been at the club for five seasons, and currently plays for one of our greatest rivals. I think that’s one of my favourite things about it though, that we do care so much, and at the end of the day, no matter what they do afterwards, I think I will always have a soft spot for any player that has worn the red of Arsenal, and be thankful for their part in my fanaticism.