I couldn't possibly tell you but clearly we are not in a position to replace Fabregas like for like as someone of his calibre out there would go to a bigger club. In all honesty a player who wasn't quite up to the level of Fab but still a very good player would have been more use to us last season.
If Nasri doesn't go we possibly have enough in midfield to cope with the loss of Fab imo but the money from his sale would need to be invested heavily at the back and up top. If Nasri goes as well we'd need to invest heavily in a midfielder. I'd rather see a forward, LB and CB come in.
The run of games without Fabregas playing but with Nasri playing, like several spells after xmas, were shocking with Nasri playing in his role, he is incapable of filling that role.
Replacing Fabregas will essentially take getting lucky on another 16 year old, anyone older will cost 30mil + Fabregas is still massively under rated purely because Arsenal haven't won anything while he's been here. He got the assist in the world cup and euro cup finals, and was excellent in both tournaments. He is irreplacable, that doesn't mean the team can't improve but it means other players will have to take up the slack.
I don't rate Carrick, Fletcher they aren't spectacular players, but they are consistant, they make mistakes like anyone else but they aren't mistake prone, a lot of our team are. If you took Ronaldo out of a mistake prone team rather than a consistant if not spectacular team and you could have had major issues.
Clichy, is in no way a bad defender, again I'll point out, Vidic being talked as one of the best defenders around, he made more mistakes and often more costly than Clichy did. Every single defender, bar none, makes mistakes that leads to goals. Sagna cost us more goals that cost us more results than Clichy, simple as that. Normally Sagna makes shockingly dumb mistakes, like clearing from the edge of the box, into the middle of the box where the other team scores, he's done that 4-5 times in the past 3 seasons littered amongst dozens of other mistakes.
ANyway, the thing that is winding me up the most is, Fergie, Dalglish, Mancini seem to be, you know, being managers, chasing players, having talks, signing people and getting on with it.
Arsenal seem to have Wenger off on holiday for weeks, doing smeg all, losing his players, not getting signings sorted while telling everyone he won't be making signings till late July. How many of the players he might be looking at will already have signed for other clubs by then. Is Mata going to feel more wanted by a team that sends a team early June to speak to him, or Wenger, on a sinking ship, who finally wants to talk to him late July, well into preseason training?
If Arsenal went out after the season finished and put pen to paper to bring in Mata, a CB, a DM, would Fabregas consider staying, would Nasri go, would Clichy have signed for City, etc, etc, etc.
