Fabregas to Barcelona in December? Possible.

Although it's been no secret throughout the transfer season that Barcelona have been banging down Arsenal's door for their top midfielder, Cesc Fabregas, Arsenal has either refused to sell or asked for a ballpark figure of 100,000,000 euros, rougly 143mil in US dollars. Barcelona spent about that much on all of their transfers combined this summer, and seemed almost willing to pay up for the Spanish international, but then Arsenal would change their mind and say Fabregas was not for sale.

Apparently, according to Joan Laporta, president of the club, seems to believe that Fabregas will be in a position to make a transfer to his team, Barcelona, as soon as the December transfer season. He seems pretty sure that it will happen, but he's also making a lot of assumptions as to how Arsenal's season will go. Laporta is assuming 1)that Arsenal will not make it out of the group stages for the Champions League, 2)that they will do poorly in the first few months of the season, and that because of these two factors, Arsenal will look for new players to help their rankings and thereby get rid of Fabregas. I have found two obvious problems with Laporta's assumptions.

Problemo numero uno: Arsenal is in a ridiculously easy group for the CL. Their group, Group H, is composed of AZ Alkmaar (Dutch), Olympiakos (Greek), and Standard Liege (Belgian). I have never heard of any of these teams progressing very far in the CL, save for Arsenal. To say that Arsenal will not progress is to say CR9 will not score a goal between now and December (and although I hope for his demise in the soccer world every day, he, in all of his power, will score goals at Madrid).

Problemo numero dos: Although Arsenal are currently ranked in 6th place in the tables for the Premier League, it is impossible and imprudent to say that that's where they will stay. One needs only to look back at Man United's horrible start at the beginning of last season, or Barcelona's demise in the '07-08 season after the injury of Leo Messi. Man United, unfortunately, eventually bested Liverpool for the top spot (yet again) of the Premier League, and Barcelona slumped into 3rd place when they had once commanded 1st.

Now surely it is possible (though certainly not probable) that Arsenal won't make it out of the group stages for the CL. It is also possible that they will continue to stay outside of the top 4 spots in the Premier League. But is it probable? With a team like Arsenal, who are surely hoping to improve on last season, it's not probable. Arsene Wegner is going to look to capitalize on all of his manpower, Fabregas included. This reliance on his starters will probably be amplified if the 2-game ban on Eduardo in the CL is upheld by UEFA, who are not to keen on recinding game bans.

I am going to keep following the story as it progresses, because I'm quite curious as to why Laporta feels the need for another midfielder when he has two of the best, probably THE two best, midfielders in the world. One can only speculate, which is what I will do.