I promise - I swear, I really do swear - that we are not going to become one of those THIS IS EVEN TANGENTIALLY ARSENAL-RELATED SO WE'RE GOING TO WRITE 800 WORDS ON IT BECAUSE PAGEVIEWS. We wanted to highlight this particular piece of transfer-season detritus, though, to illustrate a larger point. The usual caveats of course apply - it's Metro, it's thin, there's no corroborating source, etc. Onwards!
There's not much meat on this particular factory-raised chicken - it's a little less than a paragraph of text surrounded by big, glorious, shiny pictures. And that text isn't particularly conclusive, illustrative, or definite - it's larded with wiggle words like "could" and "may" and "not off the cards". None of what is in the article is exactly concrete statements of I AM LEAVING BECAUSE I HAVE ARSENAL DNA.
But!
- The source of the quotes is David Dein, who has a good relationship with Wenger despite no longer being on the board.
- They're actual Dein words, not "sources close to Dein say" which means someone would have made them up
- David Dein is the father of Darren Dein, who is Cesc's agent
Now, we all know that agents are...not the upstanding, straight-shooting citizens we'd all like them to be. Agents exist to make money for their clients, and by extension for themselves; this leads to a situation where agents can and will say anything about their clients in order to keep that money train rolling down the tracks. But in this case, Dein perè may be sneakily plowing a furrow and dropping a seed into the ground; it may be that the Deins are working together to try to make as graceful of an exit for Cesc as possible. We obviously don't know their agenda, or whether they even have one - but it's a nice possibility to ponder, for this particular player.
Cesc Fabregas is no ordinary squad player. We will not write articles like this for 18 year old academy graduates, or for the vague possibility that Wayne Rooney will take a pay cut to play in a different shade of red. But this is Cesc, and I personally would love to see him back at Arsenal; this article is very far from even being half way definite, but if there's even a glimmer of truth to it it's probably worth writing and talking about.
Maybe I'm wishcasting this one, but I want to see the truth in it, so I'm choosing to see it as the first step in the annual summer dance between club and player - except this time, it's to bring a fantastic player in and not watch him leave. And I refuse to believe there's anything wrong with that.