Sports
Fabregas Dilemma, Sign Of Tough Times For Arsenal
Two weeks ago, Ivan Gazidis, all too aware of unprecedented levels of dissent among his club’s fans, promised a stormy meeting of the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust that the time had finally come for change.
“We’re going to see some turnover of players, some new signings coming in. I expect it will be a busy close season for the club,” the chief executive insisted.
Gazidis knew he was under pressure. Having at one stage been fighting for trophies on four fronts last season, the team’s prospects fell apart following the shattering Carling Cup final defeat by Birmingham City and they eventually finished fourth in the Premier League, and trophyless for a sixth consecutive season.
That, combined with a controversial decision to increase ticket prices and the uncertainty created by elusive American billionaire Stan Kroenke’s effective takeover, left the bond between club and fans as fragile as many AST members could remember.
“We’re working hard, very hard. We need to correct failings that we have, and there’ll be some new signings and some departures,” said Gazidis, heralding a watershed summer.
Since then, Arsenal’s fans have had to sit and watch while champions Manchester United have strengthened with the big-money acquisitions of Phil Jones and Ashley Young, Liverpool have spent similar amounts on Jordan Henderson, and Chelsea have completed the most expensive managerial signing in history by recruiting Andre Villas-Boas from Porto.
Meanwhile, at the Emirates, they’ve had to make do with the £1m capture of Carl Jenkinson from Charlton – and the focus of transfer activity is now on the possibility of their captain leaving, rather than any incoming new faces.
Barcelona’s reported bid for Cesc Fabregas is no surprise, given their long-standing interest in bringing the midfielder home. Equally, the player himself clearly wants to return – but what may have shifted is Arsenal’s attitude. My understanding is that Barcelona would like to conclude a deal when Fabregas is back in the city next week, visiting friends and family.
They would prefer to do business before he is forced to return to pre-season training in London on 5 July, enabling him to go on Barca’s tour to the US, and avoid the messy, late negotiations that did little for relations with Arsenal last close-season.
So what should Arsenal do if and when a raised bid comes in? On the one hand they are well within their rights to follow the lead of Spurs when rebuffing Chelsea’s pursuit of Luka Modric, and ignore Barcelona again.
Fabregas still has four years of his contract left to run so Wenger has no need to panic yet. Perhaps most decisively, if Gazidis and Kroenke think the mood among the fans is hostile now, just wait until they allow Fabregas to leave for less than his worth. They know this and may not dare countenance such a move.
However, Barcelona have other transfer targets and their maximum spend of £35m falls significantly short of Arsenal’s valuation for their midfielder, and until this gap closes any deal remains unlikely. The Spanish club knows it will get its man one day, perhaps at a time in the future when he would fit more easily into their stellar side, so their president Sandro Rosell may simply say the right things to please the club’s members, but then fail to raise his offer sufficiently.
And yet, for the first time, Arsene Wenger may be prepared to think the previously unthinkable. Fabregas’ recent injury problems, (he scored just three league goals last season), the emergence of Jack Wilshere and the problems associated with retaining an unsettled player may mean the manager allows his captain to leave.
Wenger may look at the way United and Liverpool have survived and then thrived following the painful departures of icons Cristiano Ronaldo and Fernando Torres respectively, and begin a much-needed revamp in spectacular style.
But Arsenal have another problem. The harsh reality is that despite being 95% owned by two billionaires, Kroenke and Alisher Usmanov, and boasting a fantastic stadium, the club is no longer in the same financial league as the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City when it comes to player wages and transfer spend.
To some extent this can be put down to a noble emphasis on sustainability at a time when loss-making has become the norm in the Premier League, and with Uefa’s Financial Fair Play rules on the horizon, the club’s foresight should be recognised.
But just like on the pitch, Arsenal are also guilty of financial underperformance. In the 2009-10 season, for instance, the club’s commercial revenue of £44m was almost half of that of United’s £84m.
Seven years ago, rather than issue equity but dilute their highly profitable stakes in the club, Arsenal’s principal share-holders sold long-term naming rights for their new stadium and struck a shirt-sponsorship deal as part of the same agreement.
Today, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs and Aston Villa all have more valuable deals, but Arsenal are locked in, hence the club’s commercially-driven pre-season tour to the Far East next month, which will go ahead despite Wenger’s reservations.
“We’re well behind the clubs we’re expected to compete with in revenue,” admitted Gazidis a fortnight ago.
“We’re competing with clubs who spend a lot more than us, so our spend must be as efficient as possible.”
This all matters because as well as the uncertainty over Fabregas, the club has also allowed the contracts of players like Gael Clichy and Samir Nasri to run down, and both are now deciding whether to stay at the Emirates.
Arsenal are now in advanced negotiations with three key targets, with Phil Jagielka, Gervinho and Ricky Alvarez all linked with a move to the club, but many fans feel that Wenger, due to his distaste for the kind of “financial doping” he sees at other clubs, is too loyal to the principle of developing talent rather than simply buying it in. Certainly, rival clubs have become equally familiar with the French talent pool of young players that Wenger has traditionally scoured for value signings.
Others believe Wenger badly misses the guidance and decisiveness of his friend, former vice-chairman David Dein, the man responsible for many of the club’s most successful signings in the first decade of the manager’s tenure.
Four years after he left the club, Dein’s return would perhaps help when it comes to the issue of Fabregas. His son Darren is the Spaniard’s agent, another twist in a long-running saga. Certainly, the bitter battle between Kroenke and Usmanov, who recently criticised the board for the recent lack of silverware, can hardly help when it comes to a consistent transfer strategy.
Usmanov now owns close to the 30% of shares required to be granted access to the club’s detailed financial accounts under Premier League rules. He is expected to take up that opportunity in order to highlight where mistakes have been made over player contracts. Some feel that Gazidis is struggling, that Kroenke is too distant and needs to communicate directly with the supporters for the first time since taking control. Perhaps no other club in the Premier League better demonstrates the tension between ambition and responsibility. There is tension between the main shareholders. There is tension between the board and the fans. And there is tension between Arsenal and Barcelona over what to do about Fabregas.
Arsenal’s decision over their captain will set the tone for the club for seasons to come. But whatever Arsenal now does, the saga has highlighted challenging times for a traditional club struggling to adapt to the modern footballing landscape.
Dan Roan is with BBC Sports
Nigerian football fans and former internationals may have finally joined the call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to save Nigerian football from the grip of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), demanding a complete overhaul and the resignation of the board following a series of national-team heartbreaks, including the Super Eagles’ failure to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, their second consecutive absence and the Super Falcons’ recent loss of an automatic qualification spot for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil.
Until now, football legend Segun Odegbami has been a lone voice in the vanguard of those calling on the Ibrahim Gusau-led NFF board to step aside. However, many ex-internationals, angered that the national embarrassment has now spilled over to the women’s team, have joined the call to “save our football.”
“We are demanding a total systemic clear-out and consequences at every tier of Nigerian football,” one of the former players said yesterday, pleading to remain anonymous to avoid “arrows” from what he described as desperate officials holding Nigerian football by the jugular.
Ahead of the September 27, 2026 elective congress of the NFF, scheduled to hold in Lafia, Nasarawa State, Chairman of the Advocacy for Nigeria Football Reforms Initiative, Prince Harrison Jalla, has also painted a gloomy picture of the future of Nigerian football.
Jalla’s position is in tandem with that of some aspirants who are also crying blue murder, alleging that the electoral procedure is skewed in favour of incumbent NFF President Ibrahim Musa Gusau to secure a smooth passage to a second term unopposed.
Jalla insisted that “all indicators are pointing to a gloomy picture for the future of Nigerian football, mainly due to administrative ineptitude, while the gladiators remain engrossed and fixated on the election.”
“The major crux of the election is the guidelines, which make it very difficult for other candidates to secure endorsements from across the six geopolitical zones to challenge Gusau.
“The NFF elective congress creates a skewed voting structure because [certain blocs] hold an overwhelming majority of the voting power, which critics argue marginalises key football stakeholders such as club owners, players, coaches, referees and sports writers.
“Out of the total delegates and voting structure, the 37 State FA chairmen form the primary voting bloc, making it difficult for independent candidates to win.
“This is so because of the marriage between the FA chairmen and the NFF. Most FA chairmen depend solely on the Federation for favours. Over time, during national and international engagements, the NFF uses such opportunities to reward the FA chairmen with trips and estacodes.
“They have been so compromised that no Jupiter would make them see reasons for a change. The system, therefore, heavily favours the incumbent leadership seeking re-election. That explains why they were in a hurry to pass a vote of confidence in the NFF leadership even when Nigerian football became topsy-turvy.
“As desperation has beclouded their reasoning, they have forgotten how low they have dragged Nigerian football.”
A cursory look at the catalogue of failures by Nigeria’s national teams will reveal this;
Super Eagles (Senior Men): Failed to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Their campaign ended in agonising fashion in November 2025 during the CAF playoff final, when they lost 4–3 on penalties to DR Congo. This marked the second consecutive World Cup missed by the senior national team. Earlier, in January 2026, they were also eliminated from the 2025 AFCON via a penalty shootout.
Super Falcons (Senior Women): Suffered an early continental exit by losing 1–0 to Cameroon in the 2026 WAFCON quarter-finals. The defeat stripped them of an automatic ticket to the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil, forcing them into an inter-confederation playoff route. Worse still, Banyana Banyana of South Africa stopped the Super Falcons with a 2-1 defeat in Morocco, marking Nigeria’s worst outing in the history of WAFCON.
Golden Eaglets (Men’s U-17): Failed to qualify for the U-17 AFCON and subsequently missed out on three consecutive FIFA U-17 World Cups — 2023, 2025 and 2026.
Flying Eagles (Men’s U-20): Missed both the 2026 U-20 AFCON and the FIFA U-20 World Cup.
Olympic Team (Men’s U-23): Failed to qualify for the 2023 U-23 AFCON, which directly resulted in their failure to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
An official NFF apology to the government and Nigerians was met with backlash, with fans dismissing it as “too little, too late” and “one apology too many”, while demanding actual resignations.
The current frustration among fans stems from what they regard as an unprecedented catalogue of systemic failures across all tiers of Nigeria’s national teams.
Segun Odegbami said the failures had become one too many.
“If you fail to take your team to the World Cup, you find out that more often than not, they vote you out or sack you.
“That’s the measure. If you have a coach who doesn’t do well, they sack him. If you have a player who is doing badly, you remove him.”
“These guys have not succeeded. They’re our friends; that’s the painful thing. We know ourselves. We are all in the business and, when we champion the fact that they should go, they make you an enemy.
“It’s not a personalised thing. They have failed and, if we go back to that route, we are going to fail as we have failed before,” he said.
The financial damage from missing recent major tournaments is equally devastating, with total losses estimated at between ?150 billion and ?300 billion in direct payouts and broader economic partnerships.
This continuous string of qualification failures has effectively choked off the federation’s primary revenue pipelines and left its local development initiatives starved of funds.
The economic wreckage breaks down across several critical areas. By failing to reach the expanded World Cup, the NFF forfeited a guaranteed baseline participation fee of $10.5 million, reportedly worth roughly ?15.5 billion.
This single tournament loss wiped out an amount equivalent to roughly 87 per cent of the NFF’s projected annual operational budget. Had the Super Eagles advanced beyond the group stage, the rewards would have risen above $12 million, while reaching the quarter-finals could have yielded up to $20 million in performance-related payments.
Early exits by the Super Falcons and the qualification failures of the youth teams, U-17, U-20 and U-23, mean the NFF has also missed out on vital developmental subsidies and travel grants normally provided by continental governing bodies.
Corporate organisations and major sports betting companies are scaling back their sponsorship valuations. Without global television exposure, the NFF cannot command premium rates for brand placement.
The federation also misses out on potential revenue from global jersey sales, training gear and licensed supporter memorabilia that normally spike around major tournaments.
By missing out on tournament participation, Nigeria also loses leverage to draw heavily from FIFA’s financial programmes aimed at upgrading domestic training academies and pitches.
Consecutive missed World Cups have further lowered the market value of the national team brand, making future broadcast and marketing rights significantly harder to sell at a premium.
Former Ajax midfielder Hedwiges Maduro has praised Nigerian striker Tolu Arokodare, highlighting the forward’s strength and power and suggesting that he could prove valuable to Ajax in the Eredivisie.
Arokodare joined Ajax from Wolverhampton Wanderers on a season-long loan in July, with the Dutch club holding an option to make the move permanent.
He has already made an impact for his new side, providing an assist in Ajax’s 2-0 victory over PEC Zwolle in their opening Eredivisie fixture.
Maduro discussed Arokodare’s qualities during an appearance on ESPN’s Voetbalpraat, where he assessed how the Nigerian could complement Ajax’s attacking options.
He sees Arokodare as offering a different profile to Marcos Leonardo, particularly against opponents who defend deep and limit the space available for attacking runs.
Speaking about the Nigerian striker, Maduro highlighted his physical qualities and explained why he believes they could make him a valuable option for Ajax in the Dutch top flight.
“I think Tolu has something special, in terms of strength and power. I think he can be of real value in the Eredivisie,” Maduro said, as quoted by Ajax Showtime.
According to Maduro, the tactical demands of certain matches could make Arokodare’s physical presence an important option for Ajax, especially when opponents retreat towards their own penalty area.
He contrasted the situation with Leonardo, who he believes benefits from having space to make attacking runs. Maduro explained that when teams defend deep, those spaces become more difficult to find.
“Leonardo needs space. If teams drop back completely, where are you going to make those runs?
Then you get more use out of Tolu as a focal point to drop the ball,” he added.
The Chairman of the Local Organizing Committee, LOC, of the Arsenal Nigeria Converge 2026, Ugochukwu Oputa, has said that over 25 states across Nigeria were involved in the second edition of the Arsenal Converge scheduled for Port Harcourt from August 14 to 16, 2026.
Oputa disclosed this on Sunday after the Converge meeting at the Ediz Wine Bar in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
According to him, Arsenal’s popularity cuts across the nation, and the Converge is organized to provide a period for supporters to network, interact, and harmonize.
“Knowing how Arsenal’s popularity is spread across the nation, it became necessary that all the different supporters of Arsenal club across the country harmonize and create a particular period where we can meet, network and interact,” Oputa said.
He outlined the five-day schedule of activities to include
Press conference,
Environmental sanitation and community service at Mile 1 Market, Diobu, involving both visitors and residents, arrival, welcome and cocktail party. Others included Games Day, football competition and other fun activities at the Rivers State University football pitch, Community Shield watch party yesterday, where all Arsenal supporters’ groups met, interacted, and discussed the future of Arsenal, including plans for the 2027 hosting rights of the Converge.
Oputa added that this year’s Converge which was in Port Harcourt, had over 3,000 fans registered.
“Port Harcourt Arsenal Community is a recognized supporters’ club of Arsenal in London and we have over 25 states that participated in the Arsenal Nigeria Converge 2026,” he said.
Also speaking, a member of the Nigeria Arsenal Supporters Working Committee, Nsikak Ntia, said that what distinguishes Arsenal supporters is their offline community impact.
“What we are doing here in Port Harcourt is beyond football. It’s a family that is growing. We had over 3,000 to 4,000 people on Saturday at the Rivers State University that shared the confidence that Arsenal represents,” Ntia said.
He noted that the club’s motto, ‘Victoria Concordia Crescit’ – ‘Victory Through Harmony’ – is the bedrock of the group.
“The work that we do at Mile 1 Market is to help with environmental protection and increase what we do in society.
“We also have future plans to promote environmental protection and better ways to handle waste.
“These are things that are germane for our future, the future of our young people and generations unborn.
” It goes beyond football, it goes beyond banter, it goes beyond yapping at each other.
“That is what Arsenal Football Club is all about. Arsenal has the most well-organized supporters’ club in Nigeria and Africa’ he sated.
-
News2 days agoRSG Targets Nine Million Residents in Mosquito Net Distribution Campaign
-
Oil & Energy2 days agoAiyedatiwa Signs New Electricity Bill
-
Maritime2 days agoMarine Minister Commends President Tinubu On NPERA Bill Assent
-
Oil & Energy2 days agoNLNG Commissions Research And Innovation Centre In RSU
-
News2 days agoKenPoly Holds Eight Convocations, August 29
-
News2 days agoRSG Begins Another Phase of Projects Commissioning Today
-
News2 days agoRMAFC Completes Revenue Sharing Review, Proposes New Pay
-
Maritime2 days agoNAGAFF Petitions IGP Over Alleged Maritime Police Harassment