Cesc Fabregas will look to make Arsenal pay for their failure to re-sign him when he faces his old club in their match against English Premier League leaders Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in London tomorrow.
Once the jewel in the crown of Arsene Wenger’s squad, Spain midfielder Fabregas left the north London side to join boyhood club Barcelona in 2011, but he was never quite so central a figure with the star-studded Catalan giants and Arsenal had the option to buy back their former captain in pre-season.
However, with Arsenal’s squad now featuring a clutch of midfield playmakers in Mesut Ozil, Santi Cazorla and Aaron Ramsey, to name but three, veteran French boss Wenger — who this week celebrated his 18th anniversary in charge of the Gunners — felt he could do without his one-time talisman.
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Chelsea, by contrast, were happy to spend £27 million (US$46 million) to bring Fabregas back to London, with Blues manager Jose Mourinho boasting it took him just 20 minutes to seal the deal.
So far Chelsea’s investment has been rewarded with seven Fabergas assists, the latest in this week’s 1-0 UEFA Champions League win at Sporting in Lisbon, while Mourinho’s men have won five and drawn one of their six Premier League matches to open up a six-point lead on the Gunners heading into this weekend’s matches.
“Fabregas has made a huge impact. I know you kind of expect that from him, but most of our chances come from him opening up defenses,” Chelsea captain John Terry told the London Evening Standard. “Not a lot of people can see the passes he does, let alone make it.”
Meanwhile, Fabregas brushed aside all talk of a conflict of loyalties in an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais.
“I remind you that I played the Champions League final against Barcelona [with Arsenal] and I swear I would have done anything to win that game — and I have been a Barcelona fan since I was a kid,” Fabregas said. “So I know that when I play against Arsenal I will know who is my [current] team, who are my colleagues and who I defend.”
Arsenal have won just six points taken from 20 matches away to teams finishing in the eventual top five during the past five Premier League campaigns, but fresh from seeing former Manchester United striker Danny Welbeck score a hat-trick in the Gunners’ 4-1 Champions League rout of Galatasaray, Arsenal defender Per Mertesacker believes the club are ready to break out of their rut.
“We know we can do better than the two consecutive seasons [at Chelsea] before and I think we will try new things on Sunday to get a better result than last year,” Mertesacker said.
Tomorrow also sees another man up against his old side when Tottenham Hotspur boss Mauricio Pochettino, who only arrived in pre-season, faces former club Southampton — an impressive second in the table, despite also losing several players to bigger clubs.
Liverpool minus Luis Suarez have taken just seven points from their first six league matches and suffered a Champions League defeat by Basel in midweek and West Bromwich Albion will fancy their chances at Anfield today.
“When confidence is low, it can become about the individual, but we have to get back to being a team,” Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers said.
Premier League champions Manchester City, held to a 1-1 draw by AS Roma, will also look for a boost after a poor European display when they travel to Aston Villa.
“They [Villa] have started pretty well this season, so it’s another tough game for us,” City’s former Villa midfielder James Milner said.
Newcastle United will try to improve a desperate record dating back to last season of one win in 14 league games away to Swansea City today, but such is the ferocious dislike of manager Alan Pardew among many Magpies fans, even victory in south Wales may not be enough to change their minds.
Meanwhile, a sign of changing times is that it is Everton, not Manchester United, who had the European tie in midweek — albeit in the Europa League — ahead of their clash at Old Trafford tomorrow.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB