Arsenal News: Cesc Fabregas Is Back At Arsenal To Stay

Good morning/afternoon from a very tired blogger today.

My eldest son turned 20 yesterday and it meant we had a lot of visitors to the house up until the small hours and as a result I couldn't do all the preparatory work on my blog that I like to do at night time. That means I'm doing my best to catch up now and put something coherent together.

First of all we had the members day at the Emirates yesterday and the thousands of fans who were present we treated to the sight of the return of Cesc from his summer holidays. He was accompanied by RVP and the two of them looked very trim to me.

We are in the unfortunate position of having had our two star players play in the World Cup final which took place only five weeks before the start of the season and as a result they have not participated in pre-season training to date.

With only just over a week to the start of the season the two of them have a lot to do to get themselves match fit no matter how well they may have kept their fitness levels up.

Their participation in the later stages of the World Cup also means that they will be more likely to suffer from injuries as the season progresses and their tough schedule catches up with them. It will be vital that the boss manages to rest the two of them at certain times during the season just to recharge their batteries for the good of the team.

Cesc in particular hasn't had a proper summer break since 2007 as he has played in Euro 2008, the Confederations Cup and World Cup 2010.

The situation with RVP is a little different I suppose as he missed most of last season injured for us and hopefully he won't suffer for his exploits at the World Cup. He is a player who is very prone to injury though and every time he goes down after a tackle I think the worst. He will need to be lucky with injuries this season if we are to make the challenge that we want to. 

Obviously the focus was on the appearance of Cesc at the club yesterday after all the transfer speculation throughout the summer. All along Arsenal have said that he wasn't for sale and that they wouldn't negotiate.

It wasn't a negotiating tactic to raise the price but a simple statement that Cesc is our captain, has five years left on his contract and is a huge part of our future plans. As far as Arsenal are concerned the matter is closed and they want to hear no more about it.

It will be interesting to see what Cesc has to say when he faces the media or if he is interviewed on the club site but I'm sure he knows that any move to Barcelona is dead in the water and he needs to get his head down and work hard at Arsenal to achieve his aims with us. If his form suffers we will know his mind is elsewhere but I doubt that very much.

However, next summer we can expect Barcelona to mount the same hideous campaign all over again and it will be even harder to hold on to our prize asset then.

It would seem that Jay Simpson is on his way out of Arsenal as his first team chances will be extremely limited and he is at the stage in his career where he needs to be playing on a regular basis. There are a few Championship clubs looking to sign him and a little over £1 million to our coffers for the right to do that. He did well on loan at QPR last season and if he goes I wish him all the best.

Some deluded Spuds player as said that they will do better than us in the Champions league this season and it's funny to hear it coming from them. They haven't even won through to the group stages yet and when they do they will have a low seeding unlike Arsenal who are sure to be a top seed again I think.

I'm not going to make any ridiculous claims here but I would be very surprised if the Spuds managed to get out of their group at the first attempt. Let's see how good their squad is when they have to play at that level and try to compete in the league too.

Bolton are still hoping to get Wilshere on loan this coming season but in my opinion Arsenal would be crazy to let him go. I think he has a big part to play in our team this season and he has certainly shown a lot more in pre-season than a lot of other players as it stands.

We play Legia warsaw at 4pm tomorrow afternoon and I think that the starting 11 in that game should be a good pointer for our opening game at Liverpool next week. It will be interesting to see if Wilshere will be in the team tomorrow. 

Finally for today there's the small matter of my Fantasy league and the fact that it now has over 200 teams in it which means that there will be trophies for the winner and the runner up. If you want to sign up the link is here and the code to join my league is 33954-12064 after you have set up a team. 

I'm running the league this season with a little help from 11 Gunners and I'd like to thank them for their help in promoting my blog and the fantasy league too.

If you do sign up please take the time to join Captain Arsenal's league too as he has been a great help to me in promoting my blog on Twitter. The code to join his league is 13028-5211 and he would be delighted to welcome you to his league.

I'm also running a results prediction league on "I know the score" which is a part of the Fantasy Premier league site. Here's the link to sign up and make your predictions and the code to join my league is FBE3B-ZGP if anybody would like to try their hand at it.

Here's a look at Cesc back at the club yesterday.

And here's a bit of what he can do when he's at his best.

See You Tomorrow.