Wenger to fight for Fabregas

It must be the end of the season. Cesc Fabregas is being linked with a move away from Arsenal.

The Gunners captain, as ever, is expected by many to leave the club this summer with a move to boyhood team Barcelona being discussed again.

However, Arsene Wenger is in no mood to sell as he looks to improve his squad and will do everything he can to hold onto his man.

The Frenchman said: “I expect him to be here, and I will fight very hard to keep him here. You have always to fight when you have a player of that quality. You must always fight to keep your players.”

Wenger’s cause will of course not have been helped by the fact that Arsenal’s season took a dramatic turn for the worse after losing the Carling Cup final to Birmingham in February.

Since that day, they crashed out of the FA Cup and Champions League and in the Premier League, they dropped to 4th position having been title contenders for the majority.

This means that there is no guarantee of Champions League football next season; again, this is something that won’t help keep hold of Fabregas.

Wenger was keen to defend his team though, saying a move elsewhere wouldn’t necessearily be of benefit to the Spaniard or for any other player perhaps wanting out.

He said: “What guarantees you that if you go somewhere else you will win trophies? The biggest pride for a captain is to be committed to his club and deliver trophies with his team.”

“A player who changes his club every time he is frustrated or when he doesn't win a trophy, goes nowhere.”

It certainly is crucial for Arsenal that they hold onto their skipper. They want to be searching for players, perhaps wearing adidas Football Boots, to play alongside him rather than for his replacement.

Overall, it is an extremely important summer for the club with one of the main tasks being to keep hold of Fabregas and build a team around him.

Is Denilson leaving the first sign of recovery at Arsenal?

Although the sounds coming out of Arsenal in recent weeks have been fairly negative, the reality remains that the imminent departure of Denilson from the club is the first public acceptance by Arsene Wenger that the wheat needs to be separated from the chaff at Arsenal FC.

Having had to endure a parting statement from Denilson that the club does not match his ambitions (or perhaps that his inability to perform at the top level means that he has been picked far less frequently in recent times by the Gunners as he has been awful in every game he has performed in), the Gunners now have at least one space in their squad to fill up as they seek to keep their squad at the level it needs to be at in order to challenge on several fronts. Those following the Arsenal betting will know a shakeup is needed.

With Scott Parker being frequently linked with the club in recent weeks, Wenger must regret his decision not to sign the combative midfielder after he left Newcastle United and when he had a few more years left in the tank. However, with Parker a born leader and a man who knows when to hold back rather than bomb forward, unlike the effective but not world class Alex Song, it still seems an investment well worth risking. After all, no one is going to make Arsenal Champions League betting tips unless something changes.

However, with Wenger unlikely to be happy paying the reported £6 million asking fee that Spurs and Liverpool will be more than happy to cough up, the chances are that the 6.5% ticket price increase is not going to be spent on bringing the England man to Arsenal, and instead Wenger will seek as always to sign an unknown player who in all likelihood will need a good season or two in the Premier League before he can cope with the physical demands of the league and will leave Arsenal staying in the cycle of trying to play catch-up on the cheap.