The 'Will He, Wont He' Cycle

The premier league at the moment is dominated at regular intervals by two main players, Carlos Tevez and Cesc Fabregas. These two always ignite the bonfire of transfer speculations which feed us football fans during these bleak and barren summer months, and i have started to wonder what will happen to these two.

Being a Manchester City fan I have long grown weary of 'El Apache' and his moaning about leaving the club to be with his family, his astronomical weekly salary of 200,000 pounds surely allows him to ship over half of Buenos Aires and enclose it within a diamond studded compound for his family if that is what he really wants? Or surely he could fight for all he is worth to secure a move to Santos or Boca Juniors for 20,000 pounds a week? Then I would know that he is serious. We cannot know what he truly wants, but he does not make it easy to guess, for a man who has everything... but Mancini keeps on telling us, the paying customer, that Tevez is staying. How can two such personalities disagree so plainly within the same institution? Is cannot work for long, as there can only be one winner. But the total lack of decision is the most confusing aspect of all of this. In December, Tevez said 'I will leave Man City', was your flight delayed Carlos? Or is it booked for next week? Or next January? Or Next Year? Mancini has noticed this and attached a 50 million pound price tag on Tevez. This prices most clubs out of the question, leaving only the disinterested European behemoths to declare an interest, which is yet to happen. Although the directors at City will think 'job done' it will just mean that the cycle will continue for us fans...

This summer, much like last summer, the two most printed words in various sports pullouts are 'Fabregas' and 'Barca', often in the same sentence. It is a romantic story, the long lost child desperately trying to escape the clutches of his childhood, and return to his home, but one that gets more plainly obvious the more you look into it. By the end of last season, when Arsenal's ritual self destruction was well and truly at DEFCON 5, Fabregas' mind was well and truly fixed upon the Ramblas, not Ashburton Grove. But once again Wenger is desperate for him to stay, as Fabregas is the living and breathing proof of his footballing philosophy working, but the most powerful club in Europe cannot be denied its birthright forever, and so Wenger slapped a huge price tag on Fabregas, with little potential buyers and even Barcelona baulking at the price, the cycle looks set to continue.

So as the future of these two hangs in the balance, i for one grow weary of these sagas, which rival great norse epics in plots and twists and turns. As they prove that loyalty to a club stretches only as far as the cuban cigar clamped between the player's agent's teeth...

Sam Lister