Yet I don't see Fabregas ever dominate a game at arsenal in the way I see Arteta run a game for us at Everton. Especially against bigger teams. For my money Fabregas gets dominated in midfield far too often.
I don't really see him getting any better than his is now, players rarely do improve that much. I'd only want him if I had a player like a Viera or Keane to play alongside him to stop him getting bullied out the game.
he dominates almost every game he plays, you just don't notice it, he defends, he wins the ball often he turns attack into defence, and he sets up a huge number of our goals or scores them. DO you not remember a Villa game, Fabregas back from injury, didn't start, we sucked, we were truly useless, he came on and scored 2, did he set one up aswell, in about 15 minutes then went off injured maybe, I can't remember, he was outstanding, he came on and utterly utterly dominated and impressive Villa defence, one of the best in the league and ripped them to utter shreds, there are maybe 4-5 players in the league that can turn a game like that around.
What about against Barca won a penalty, broke his leg, scored a penalty, played for 10-15 minutes with a broken leg in a crucial game where he was great with some truly awful players playing like poo around him, against one of the best sides in the world, again, very few players could be so imposing in that kind of a game.
Not sure why Tummy has said Xavi is a younger version of Fabregas(I assume he meant the other way around or is very mistaken).
Likewise barcelona IS built around Xavi and has been for much longer than Arsenal have been built around Fabregas.
Iniesta had one great season, he's a decent enough player but NO WHERE NEAR what people think he is. He's miles from the best at Barca and no where near in Fabregas's league.
Xavi's best year had 36 assists, which is phenomenal, though to be fair, he played 72+ games that year, so not quite as good as it seems, 19 assists in 42 games isn't that far off to be honest. But the 16 goals in 72+ games isn't as good, in a "normal" season that would be under 10 goals. But the thing is that is Xavi's best ever season by a massive margin.
EDIT:- it was 77 games, 73 starts, truly phenomenal amount of games, but thats because of going all the way in the Euro's, spain qualifiers and went miles into the champs league, astonishing amount of games to be honest, its no less good getting 36 assists in a year, just not quite as outstanding as it appears.
The one stat I wish I had, was goals scored with Fabregas on the pitch and without in the Euro's. I would guess at 3/4 or so of the goals being scored with Fabregas on the pitch, which was only around half the time. he also started the last and least important group game while they rested Xavi, which changes the picture again in terms of minutes played in tough games.
Fabregas IS better than both players, he's quite a margin ahead of Iniesta, only marginally better than Xavi but seeing as he's one of the best in the world he's not ever going to be miles ahead of him, you could quite easily play those two in midfield with a decent defensive midfielder.
THe way Barca setup, with Keita, Busquests, Pedro/Iniesta, honestly its easy to slot Fabregas in, Keita's not particularly fantastic, Iniesta is happy to play out wide left, Pedro is a tap in artist, Busquets is simply not good at all.
You do bring some of the flak on yourselves with the constant whinging (Not I'm not saying every Arsenal fan, just an unfortunate vocal minority)
