Why Barcelona Can't Afford To Sell Cesc Fabregas To Manchester United

In the past few weeks, the Cesc Fabregas saga has reached new heights. David Moyes has openly stated that Manchester United have had bids which are believed to be around £26 million and £31 million rejected. Moyes isn’t finished there either, he appears to be surprisingly optimistic as he has said “when you are interested in good players you want to give it every opportunity to materialise. “I’ll hope that things can continue to move forward.” I was at how optimistic he was despite the countless bold statements from the Barcelona camp and the recently appointed Barcelona manager Gerardo Martino saying ‘'Man United want Cesc? If the club rejected two offers, I will reject it a third time. Cesc will be here."

So why is Moyes optimistic? Fabregas has stated his desire to play more at Barcelona many times and is said to feel ‘unloved’ by the club and the Barcelona faithful.  The Spaniards need to see if he was really wanted by Barcelona was what drove his agent to encourage bids from Manchester United and look for a potential transfer. However Fabregas has denied this is a strategy to move away and has said "I've always said I'm delighted at Barca," he told Marca. "Whoever says I'm leaving doesn't know me and has never talked to me or my agent, because he knows I don't want him to talk with other people about me.”I'm very private and don't talk about those issues, even with my family.

The question I asked myself is, why would Barcelona sell Cesc?

The common reply I get is that Barcelona need to sign a top quality centre-back desperately and that is the only way they can finance it. Yes, to an extent I agree with that as Barcelona need to replace the ageing ‘lionheart’ Carles Puyol. However, they have coped reasonably well without him for the last two seasons as the experienced and relatively injury free pairing of Piqué and Mascherano have forged a decently strong defensive partnership which contributed to the La Liga title win.

 Yet, there is another much more important reason Barcelona can’t sell Cesc Fabregas, which is the fact that they simply don’t have any other established creative midfielders to provide cover for Andrés Iniesta and Xavi.  They do have the inexperienced youngsters Sergi Roberto and Jonathan dos Santos as back up midfield options, but without enough champion’s league and league experience are they what you call adequate replacements for Xavi and Iniesta ? ... I thought not.

As much as I hate to admit it, Xavi Hernández at the grand age of 33 is a fading force. With Thiago Alcântara being sold and Xavi barely able to last a full 90 minutes, Cesc will have a hatful of chances to make his mark at Barcelona next season; which despite his rumoured desire to leave has been what he has actually wanted all along.

By Adeel Shafieq

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