Loyalty in football - Does it still exist?

Is there a disillusion of loyalty in football? Or has the era of the one club men faded and now it's the dawning of self preservation from footballers?

Firstly, as an Arsenal fan, this can be somewhat of a sensitive issue on my behalf and I have been at the heart of a clear lack of loyalty from players that have been sort of founded at Arsenal, to a certain extent, and the moment they sniff an exit route, they leave. I'm not on about Robin Van Persie, he was with the club for seven or eight seasons and granted, he isn't getting younger and had the option of going to Manchester City and getting a paycheque of well over £200,000 a week and obviously a shot at the Premier League every season.

I think he was more entitled to a move away than opposed to a Samir Nasri. The moment he sniffed a move away he took it, he only really started to breakthrough and become the player he promised to be in his third season and in August 2011 and moved to Manchester City, but in my head that just leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Arsenal gave him a better calibre of football and that age of 20 and we weren't exactly dazzling in those years but we were good enough. I suppose Wenger envisaged that Samir Nasri was hitting peak form and with only a year left on his contract before leaving. It'd be better to get some money for him instead of seeing him leave on a free. 

The one that would really get my back up would beCesc  Fabregas going to Manchester United. Fabregas himself has split the Arsenal fan base, majority of which seem to worship the ground he walks on and the rest seem to despise the way he left after being spotted at the Grand Prix when he was injured and Arsenal were playing. I can vouch that Arsenal fans rarely forget when we've been wronged but I don't think we were ever going to stop Fabregas going back to Barcelona. It felt like we adopted him and when he was old enough, we gave him the option to see his real parents hoping he wouldn't want anything to do with them, but the inevitable happened and off he went back the Camp Nou.

Football is a fickle sport and it would crush me to see him in a Manchester United shirt. I have always been a fan of Cesc and I always thought in my head that he would come back to Arsenal one day, but the United rumours are picking up a lot of pace and with Barcelona now temporarily manager less with Tito Vilanova's resignation with a relapse in his cancer rehabilitation, the new man to replace him might not see Fabregas as indispensable as Tito did. For my sake and the sake of every other Arsenal fan, I hope the new man fights tooth and nail to keep Fab', then Cesc announces he'd never think of joining Manchester United...please?  

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Comments

[Mickey Finn]

I can understand professionals being offered millions changing clubs. It's the increasingly fickle fans that get me down.