Speaking of Barcelona though, they’ve hardly covered themselves in glory over this whole thing. Institutionally, between executives and players, they ran an orchestrated campaign for around two years to unsettle Cesc at Arsenal. How often did we hear about his ‘Barca DNA’? He had a Barcelona shirt foisted on him at a celebration for Spain winning the World Cup for goodness sake. That it was a former Barcelona player, Pepe Reina, cloaked with Mugsmasher neutrality, who did it was no coincidence, I’m sure, and in the end they got what they wanted. I suspect some of their motivation was to show Arsenal they could do it and take back a player we’d ‘pinched’ from them at an early age. The reality was that he was given a chance at Arsenal that he would never have had there, but it still rankled with them, and their smug, graceless manner was evident in every conversation, and every mention of him before and after the deal had been done. Three years later they don’t care about his DNA and discarded him with a statement so lacking in class and basic manners it’s a wonder why this club is lauded worldwide. We’re all used to clubs wishing former players well as they sell them on, but check this out from the official Barcelona website yesterday. Amidst the usual goodbye waffle, they posted: But despite glowing starts to each campaign, Cesc’s contributions to the cause gradually decreased as each season drew to a close. From being someone who joined in with the attack, supplying and scoring goals, the magic tended to fade later on in each season. He only scored one, six and one goals in the last 24 games of each season. For some reason, he was never as good in the second half of a season as in the first. That has since been deleted – and rightly so – but that it was there in the first place is an appalling indictment of how they think and operate. And you know what? The very first thought I had after reading it was that somehow other all the other Barcelona players had more energy in the second half of seasons for some reason and Cesc didn’t. I wonder what that might have been. Maybe we could get Lance Armstrong PI to investigate. Could that also be part of why they’re happy to let him go? Anyway, it’s all done and dusted now. There’s nothing much at all can do about it, other than to hope that the manager’s decision is based on an actual, concrete plan and one that is going to put in place over the course of the summer to make us genuinely competitive next season. Because this is a scab that won’t take much scratching to start bleeding again.
Posted on: Fri, 13 Jun 2014 12:18:59 +0000
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