AC Milan Ready to Pounce for Cesc Fabregas Should Barcelona Transfer Crumble

Well folks, can you believe it? There is a new update in the Cesc Fabregas transfer saga! Shocker!

In a constantly changing storyline that is counted in years as opposed to days, there is yet another twist in the transfer of Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas.

The 24-year-old World Cup champion has been the talk of rumors for the past couple years linking him with a move away from Arsenal to Barcelona, where he was a youth player from the time he was 10 until he left for Arsenal at 16.

The Gunners captain was the youngest first-team player in club history at 16 years and 177 days when he made his debut in 2003. He is now the Arsenal captain and only turned 24 in May.

It has seemed apparent for a long time that he was inching ever closer to a move back to the Nou Camp, but Barcelona have been slow to act and in all the time that rumors have been swirling, the Catalans have shown very little effort in acquiring their former academy star.

While for a while it seemed that they would have no one to contest with for the midfielder, if they do not act soon, AC Milan are ready to step in and take him for their own.

Milan have become notorious lately for their mind games that they play in the transfer market. This can be seen in the pursuit of Riccardo Montolivo. All one needs to do is go to Milan's page on the Sky Sports website where in the main block of articles, there is first a report stating Milan's interest in the Fiorentina captain, yet there is then a report denying any such interest.

The rumors have been all over the place with Montolivo, Marek Hamsik, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Javier Pastore, Ganso and Alex Witsel among the many names that have been linked with Milan as additions to the midfield. Fabregas' name came up earlier this summer, but his name has not been heavily mentioned much since early June.

It seems apparent though that the club have been closely monitoring the actions taken by Barcelona in recent weeks. The Blaugrana are reportedly in negotiations, but Arsenal want time to find a replacement and Barcelona have yet to meet Arsenal's price of at least €40 million.

MiroSport has revealed Milan are preparing a package with which they could jump right in and take Fabregas should the Barcelona move fall through, again.

This proposed deal would include €35 million, which was Barcelona's rejected fee last season, but would also include former Gunner Mathieu Flamini and midfielder Urby Emanuelson. Transfermarkt.de is a website that specializes in valuing players and their transfer values has Flamini rated at €9.5 million and Emanuelson at €8 million, making the total transfer value €52.5 million, far exceeding anything Barcelona has offered and far above Arsenal's asking price.

Milan are ready to step in if Barcelona cannot reach an agreement with Arsenal very soon. Its been more than a year of this sort of back and forth "will he, won't he?" sort of game.

No one knows exactly who Mr. X is for AC Milan, but once again, the suspicion has changed. It went from Riccardo Montolivo to Cesc Fabregas very quickly. Milan have promised a superstar to the club and fans as a gift for the Scudetto from this past season.

Should a deal with Barcelona fall through, Fabregas could instantly make Milan even better than any of the other options out there.