Reports: Barcelona willing to let Cesc Fabregas leave for £30 million

According to reports from pretty much everyone in the British soccer media, Barcelona are "willing" to allow Cesc Fabregas to leave the club this summer, so long as someone meets their £30 million valuation. His preference allegedly would be to return to the Premier League, where he played for quite some time with a certain North London team that we all have a vested interest in.

It appears that Sky Sports had the first "scoop," though the Mirror appears to have a lot of the same information. I don't always really trust either of them to be totally on top of things, so here's the BBC's David Ornstein, usually a more sober reporter than the tabloids of print and screen, to corroborate.

Barcelona willing to let Fabregas leave for £30m & his preference is PL return. Arsenal have buy-back option but yet to express any interest

— David Ornstein (@bbcsport_david) May 31, 2014

That last part is not necessarily a surprise to me, and really I think it's the way I'd go too, were I the one in charge of the mounds of pound notes that Arsenal have locked away in a secret bunker under the Highbury apartments. There's no real reason for Arsenal to pursue Fabregas actively, not at this time at least. While we all want midfield depth, Fabregas isn't necessarily the type of midfielder that we need to be spending that much money on right now. A holding midfielder is a bigger need than a creator, so it wouldn't really be the most prudent use of resources to chase full-bore after Cesc right now.

On the other hand, it would absolutely be worthwhile to step in and keep one of Arsenal's rivals from bringing him in. If all that about release clauses (particularly the fabled right-of-first-refusal clause) in Fabregas' original move from Arsenal and subsequent Barca contract is true, and Barcelona agree to send Cesc to (for example) Manchester City, it wouldn't be the worst idea in the world to step in and keep that from happening. He shouldn't really be a priority at the moment, but he's too good a player to pass up, if there's an opportunity there.

Personally my hope is that Cesc's move drags on long enough for Arsenal to bring in a striker to complement Olivier Giroud and a holding midfielder, and that we've still got that £30 million lying around when he comes knocking. That's not too much to ask, is it?