Is Arsenal’s Cesc Fabregas really worth £45million?
There is no doubt that Cesc Fabregas will be subject to plenty of transfer speculation relating a summer move to his beloved Barcelona. But is he worth the £45million that has been speculated?
The Spaniard has previously made his intentions clear, that he does want to return to the Catalonian team, he played for prior to his move to the London based club. Arsene Wenger somehow managed to convince Cesc to stay at Arsenal to try and win titles here, but surely it is only a matter of time before he does get his dream move and return back to Spain, especially if Arsenal fail to win any trophies this year.
It is well documented that the main issue that saw Fabregas stay in London was that Barcelona weren’t able or prepared to improve on their initial 30million pound bid, that was rejected and if this becomes a factor again this summer, Fabregas may still be playing his football in England once more. It does seem however that the Spanish side are prepared to increase their offer this summer as the Barcelona president Sandro Rosell has stated “The maximum amount we have to spend in the transfer market is 45million, not counting player exits”.
But is Fabregas worth the full 45million?
With the current outrageous sums of money being paid for players of late, you would have to say that 45million for Fabregas is a bargain! For example, Liverpool were prepared to pay in excess of 35million for a northern hot head Andy Carroll, who is fairly unproven so far in his short career and only being really assessed on his great championship campaign last year (not the greatest league, it has to be said). With a recent call up to the England national side appearing for less than 45minutesf; it seems that he has now more than doubled in value. In my opinion he is only a 15million pound striker and even that is pushing the boundaries! He hasn’t exactly set the world on fire, only scoring a few headers this year (and he is a giant so he would be awful if he couldn’t score with his head).
Then there is the Fernando Torres saga; 50million for an undoubtedly world class striker that currently probably wouldn’t be able to break into the starting eleven for a team like Ipswich (and that’s saying something about his form), based on the last year and a half! So far in his short Chelsea career he has only managed one shot on target in his seven Chelsea appearances, a player really living up to his price tag!
Cesc Fabregas on the other hand has been a revelation over the last few seasons, and the Arsenal captain has been central to all of his team’s success (although a trophy somehow still evades them). Now if players are priced on form, ability, age and impact then Cesc has been ten times the player of both Carroll and Torres in the past year, he clearly has all the ability to be a world class player, he is only 23 and without him in the side Arsenal crumble in the middle of the park. Clearly from this compared to what Torres has achieved over the last 12 months, then surely Fab is worth much more than Torres.
Now I’m not saying that Cesc Fabregas is worth anything near the price tag paid for the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka because he is far from their talent, but I’m showing that the price system for players is ridiculous. It seems that just because a footballer gets a call up to their national side for the first time, the clubs decide that he has suddenly improved tenfold and whack a huge increase on the value of the player. A classic example of this, is Jordan Henderson of Sunderland. There is no doubt that he is a talent and will probably end up at a team like Manchester United but he was worth only 3-5million and then when he got his first senior call up for England, he somehow trebled in value according to Sunderland. I personally don’t think that Cesc Fabregas is worth £45million but because of what other players are being paid for, then he must be in that region.
