kamikaze wrote:fabregas is not coming back, the value of that clause is essentially zero.
Don't want him back anyway. Bridge burned.
Adios Cesc
I´d take him back in a heartbeat.
kamikaze wrote:fabregas is not coming back, the value of that clause is essentially zero.
There are more important clauses as per the Guardian article on the last page.
The monetary value that Arsenal were looking for was always £45m and I suspected that we would settle for just over £40m which is pretty much what it all works out in real terms. That's a huge difference to Barca's claim of 29m euro and Cesc paying the rest and the moon being made of cheese and whatever else.
I look at this deal and have to CONGRATULATE GAZIDIS, WENGER and Co.
The expected value of the deal (disregarding sell-ons and first refusal) comes out to about 38 - 39 million pounds. Then there are the sell-ons and first refusal which are very valuable options. I doubt he returns, but there is still some value there, and if he ever moves on to Inter Milan or Man City, we'd be able to grab a share of that transfer fee. If there is a 25% chance that they sell him in the next 4 years, and a transfer value of 40m pounds, and we get 50% of the fee, then that option would be worth around 5m pounds to us. Of course, Gazidis and his expensive teams will have run some scenarios to come to a deal that is acceptable to them.
Why do I congratulate Gazidis and Co. There has been a lot of unfair criticism of Arsenal for the supposed low price we got. Smart negotiators expand the number of items that can be traded to find a deal that works well for both parties.
1) Time: Barca might have low cash-flow right now, but we do not. We have used a gap of a few weeks to allow Barca to come up with initial payment.
2) Sell-on: dependent on whether Barca sell him or not. There could be significant upside for us if he ever does leave
3) Cesc not taking loyalty bonus / paying from his salary: again, a very valuable instrument
4) First refusal: Cesc obviously loves Wenger. Would Arsenal take him back? He's good enough, so why not? For those concerned about overall $$$ we are getting for Barca, note that this is a right that we would have paid for as part of this negotiation. I imagine that is something Barca offered as a way to bridge monetary gap.
We worked with Barca to move the impasse from being just about straight-up cash today, and got a deal that works for us, giving Barca time and giving us potential upside.
Humble Rex wrote:Why not?
qs has been on RvP's case ever since he displaced his boy Chamakh.
Captain wrote:In 40-50 years people will talking about Henry like they do about Bastin and Alex James now. That's what it means.
Tim wrote:To you maybe. To somebody else it'll mean something entirely different.
To be honest if by 'people' you mean posters on this board when we're septuagenarian or octogenarian codgers, we will probably be talking about Fabregas, albeit not quite as much as Henry. Fabregas exemplifies the skill of long passing like no other player Arsenal has ever seen (that I'm aware of) so he will always be a point of comparison.
Captain wrote:Arsenal value the deal at £40m, which factors in a £4m loyalty payment the player has waived. Also included in the package are performance and success-related add-ons while Arsenal have a 50% sell-on clause. Barcelona have waived any options or sell-on clauses in relation to Jon Toral and Hector Bellerin, the young players who moved from the Camp Nou to Arsenal earlier in the summer.
You can see why it took all bloody summer to sort that out. Lots of complicated issues that had to be thrashed out. At least it's all done, and we didn't do quite as badly as it first seemed out of it.
It's better than it first sounded. Good. Around £40m is still not enough but it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. It's good that we've expunged some of Toral and Bellerin's DNA as well.
YoungGunsBlog Jamie Sanderson
Papers saying as part of the Cesc deal, Barça have waived the compensation Arsenal owed for Héctor Bellerín and Jon Toral.
So apparently we paid nothing for the two kids as well. I know Barcelona were adamant that they valued them at a combined £6M, and were adding that into the bid for Cesc, but it's likely a tribunal wouldn't have valued them that highly - either way that's still a few million you can add to the total.
I hope these kids are taking notice of how highly Barcelona values them. To Barca they're basically paperweights with footballing ability, who may one day provide a bit of leverage for some underhanded transfer manoeuvre.
i guess we did a decent job in getting creative to get the transfer fee up near 40m. hooray!
So we have a 50% sell on clause and a first refusal clause? So if we buy him back in 5 years for £20 million do we get £10 million straight back?
Anyway, starting to think a bit better of this deal. We could have got £50 mill + from Madrid or City, but I was speaking to a coupe of lads at work and saying that we'd been fleeced, and they didn't think so at all really. Said that not many players go for more than £30-35 million and that, in all honesty, while Cesc is a great player he's probably not even in the top 10 players in the world. Fair enough.
Ricky1985 wrote:
Meh I've seen him in a Barcelona shirt before, let's move on.
Tim wrote:So we have a 50% sell on clause and a first refusal clause? So if we buy him back in 5 years for £20 million do we get £10 million straight back?
Was wondering this myself.
you guys think too hard
According to reports there is a sell on clause, a buy back clause and a first refusal clause.
The buy back clause is £40m so if he is for sale and wants to come, we pay that and he is back at the Emirates. No questions, job done.
If he goes somewhere else, then we get 50% of the transfer fee that he moves for.
I couldn't explain the 'first refusal' clause and I think it is imaginary.
Where did you get the 40m figure Captain? Haven't seen that bandied about anywhere, also if that were the case we wouldn't have to wait for him to go on sale right? We'd just have to wait until he wants to come back then whether or not they want to sell, they'd have to for 40m which I doubt. In which case, what's the point of the 200m release fee? Unless they're so confident he will not leave or if he does that it will not be us who go back in for him? Genuine questions mate, not being pedantic or anything.
Also the first refusal clause I reckon is that if Barca have recieved a bid which they feel happy with from someone they have to inform us immediately and give us the opportunity to match the bid and have our bid accepted.
I got the £40m figure from John Cross.
In theory, we wouldn't have to wait for him to go on sale, we could bid it tomorrow and he could come. In practice, it comes down to Cesc and Barcelona will have agreed to it because they are assured of a) him not wanting to move anytime soon and b) them getting enough 'mileage' out of him before he considered making such a move; it's just hedging your bets, like what Roma have done with Bojan.
The release clause is just a thing that they have in all of the contracts in Spain. It doesn't really mean anything and is always artificially high for that exact reason. Read what Sid Lowe says about them here:
The buy back clause is a fixed amount which would work as an exclusive release clause. So whenever we feel like offering the amount, £ 40 M by some accounts, Barca have to accept. Whether Cesc would go is another matter.
The first refusal is not fixed price, but whenever Barca receive an offer they would accept, they have to notify us, and give us the right to offer an equivalent amount, and subsequently refuse the third party offer.
The sell on clause I'm not sure would work inside the two other clauses. If the fixed buy back clause would be halved by the sell on clause it looks like a weird arrangement. I would guess it only applies to third party transfers. But it all comes down to the wording of the agreement, and we don't have access to that as far as I know.
At least it means we can stop him going to another English side.
Just saw this article in the Fabregas section of the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jun/07/yaya-toure-cesc-fabregas-barcelona-arsenal
A year ago, Barca were rumored to be offering the beast that is Yaya Toure as bait. Hmm. They really squeezed us in the last year. You have to say well-played to them, especially since they are above criticism and Platini will not do a thing about their tapping up.
That was a bullshit story. Yaya never wanted to come here.
Who knows what's true? That Barca have managed to go two years without so much as a warning from Platini is what pisses me off.
I just realised I'm past being mad at Fabregas. His statements yesterday and the details of the contract cleared up a lot and reminded me that this was a guy who liked Wenger, gave his all to Arsenal but just wanted to go home and win trophies. He was willing to take less money, which is unheard off from a top sportsmen and leave a window open for his return which, again, is unusual. He will address the Arsenal fans at the right time. Best of luck to him, f*ck you Barca.
Fabregas is fully fit and on the bench. Lol.
Only Barca could make a man support Real Madrid in a game
Cesc has already won something with Barca.
Didn't take long.
Fabregas is already celebrating trophies. Fek
Edit: didn't see Otfgoon's comment. That's a quick return on his ambitions.
Marcelo is a bitter gooner.
otfgoon wrote:Cesc has already won something with Barca.
Didn't take long.
At least he took a good tackle from Marcelo.
yeah i like marcelo. hopefully the spanish press hound madrid into getting rid of him because he's not a credit to la liga or some shit.
kamikaze wrote:otfgoon wrote:Cesc has already won something with Barca.
Didn't take long.
2004, Charity shield, "he's better than Roy Keane" ringing out around the stadium...
Meatwad wrote:yeah i like marcelo. hopefully the spanish press hound madrid into getting rid of him because he's not a credit to la liga or some shit.
Mourinho. 
Captain wrote:kamikaze wrote:
2004, Charity shield, "he's better than Roy Keane" ringing out around the stadium...
Maybe he's bad luck and they'll go into a decline now too.
Soon as I saw Fabregas make the pre-pre-assist on Messi's goal that won them the cup, all I could think was : "Wenger's probably pissing himself with joy, that's worth 2 million extra on the Fabregas fee.."
Not fit to play football in the past 5 months.
Comes off the bench in a cup final two days after his transfer.
Wouldn't even worry about that, TG. From his perspective, it's more diplomatic for him to claim that he was unfit than come out and say that he's sitting out until he gets his transfer.
As someone was speculating he may have been instructed not to play to ensure any injury didn't jeopardise the transfer. Club wouldn't want to miss out on its payday after all! 
Wenger has a history of not playing players who refuse to commit to the club, why are we assuming not playing was Cesc's initiative?