Friday, August 19, 2011

David Lacey: Cesc Fábregas is the best midfielder the Premier League has seen


When Cesc Fábregas left Arsenal for Barcelona this week the Premier League lost the finest midfielder ever to play in English football: discuss. Which is roughly what a group of football writers were doing at a pre-season dinner when the subject of outstanding midfield players was raised.

The consensus was that in the 19 seasons since the First Division clubs broke away to form the Premier League the two best midfielders have been another Arsenal player, Patrick Vieira, and Manchester United's Paul Scholes, both of whom have just retired. Fábregas was almost up there with them but he is 24 and now that he is back at the Camp Nou something even better may be yet to come.

4 comments:

Bobbie BS said...

So many thoughts about this article. Let's start with this one- if the British sporting press loves Fabergas so much then why have they been beating the drum for him to go back to Spain every summer and January for the past 4 seasons? As far as the Gunners go, they'll be better off not building their seasons plans around a player who's become a continual injury liability and who will force the manager to pick him for important away games against his best buddies in the world despite being unable to run. No more hugging the opposition while being subbed out after blowing the game and tournament by presenting gift-wrapped balls to his friends at the edge of the penalty area for easy scoring. Who wants those grapes anyway, they're so sour!

The Editor said...

Vieira, Scholes, Keane, Ronaldo and Lampard were better than Cesc.

Anonymous said...

Gerard was better than Lampard

The Editor said...

Yeah, but he was hurt much more often.