You don't have to be an Arsenal supporter to mourn the tearful departure of their star performer of recent seasons – Cesc Fábregas, lured away at last by his home town club, Barcelona – any more than you had to be an adherent of Manchester United to regret the loss of Cristiano Ronaldo in the summer of 2009. The increasing domination of the Premier League by expensive imported talent has cut both ways. It denies home-grown players their chance to mature at the top of the English game, which is no doubt one of the reasons for the constant disappointments served up by the national side. At times under Arsène Wenger's managership there has not been one home-grown name on the Arsenal team sheet. Even uncosmopolitan Wigan fielded on Saturday an al-Habsi, a López, a Figueroa, a Gómez, a Di Santo, a Diamé, a Stam and a Rodallega. Against that, it has brought the delight of watching world-class players displaying incomparable skills. Ronaldo could look spoiled and petulant; his diving at times rated Olympic-class; but few could have watched week by week without marvelling. And Fábregas, no more than a substitute in Spain's World Cup-winning team, was a masterly orchestrator in the Barça tradition. Wenger, he said on arriving at the ground where he'd longed to be, was the best man he'd met in football, and the man Arsenal must keep at all costs. Many devotees, apprehensive about the new season, may feel the man their club most needed to keep at all costs has just left them.
Source: The Guardian on 16 Aug 11
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