Fabregas offers to fund his own transfer to Barcelona

Cesc Fabregas is so desperate to leave Arsenal that he has offered to pay the Gunners €3m of his own money as part of the deal to take him to Barcelona. But it seems not even that was enough after it emerged that Arsenal had rejected the latest overtures from the Spanish club.

According to Sky the Spanish giants tabled another offer that consisted of €29m in cash plus €6m in extras and an extraordinary €3m kicker from the player himself.

But it failed persuade Arsene Wenger to sell and he is reportedly determined to squeeze €45m out of Pep Guardiola, and the Barca bid was €7m short.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

To make matters worse for Barcelona and Fabregas, the player is now fit and Arsenal have made it clear that they will expect him to don the shirt for the Gunners' Champions League qualifier later this month, if he is still at the club.

If he were to play in those games it would make him ineligible to play for any other club in the competition this season. But Arsenal's position is understandable, Wenger has never failed to qualify for the group stage in his 14 years at the club and failure to do so this year could cost the club £25m.

The Gunners will find out who they must play late this morning. As one of the seeded teams in the play-off draw, alongside Bayern Munich, Lyon, Villarreal and Benfica, but they could face Udinese of Serie A or Russian dark horses Rubin Kazan.

But even though he is so desperate to quit London he is prepared to fund his own transfer, Fabregas was all smiles at Arsenal's members' day at the Emirates on Thursday.

There had been lots of speculation about whether he would appear in the 2011/12 squad photo and what it might signify about his future, but in the end no-one was any the wiser as the photoshoot was postponed due to heavy rain.

It was also impossible to judge the supporters' attitude towards their wantaway skipper as the players were introduced to the crowd as a group rather than individually, which meant that there was no opportunity to boo Fabregas and Samir Nasri, another player who wants out of the Emirates.