Having spent hundreds of hours posting my opinion on football and other matters of Life and Death on Facebook and Twitter, here comes my first genuine blog post...

It’s entitled “HIM – in THAT shirt!”

Or Cesc Fabregas in a Chelsea shirt - an Arsenal fan’s perspective

Here we go, then:

OK, so let’s go back three months. Why should Barcelona have wished to sell him? OK, he hadn’t exactly stood out (although his stats are pretty good), but that is in a side set up to ensure that Messi is fully effective. As Arsenal fans well know, he is a world-class player (although not at Messi’s level, but there again who is?). So put him in a side in which he can express himself and he will shine, as he did for Arsenal previously. I wouldn’t want anybody’s opinion of him to be clouded by his perceived ‘failure’ at Barcelona; however, make him the fulcrum of a team, sit back and watch...

We are given to understand that there was a buy-back clause in the deal Arsenal made with Barcelona. So why would Wenger not exercise it? Well... as I said a year ago, surely the signing of Ozil means no way back for Cesc (although I’d have taken him back like a shot), and so it has proved with the manager concluding that with Ozil and Ramsey in his side, there is now no place for him at the club. With a limited transfer budget, the priorities probably need to be elsewhere. However, I very much subscribe to the view expressed by @arseblog when he wrote in June 

‘It’s simple. Just buy him – if he’s available of course – and don’t let him go make another team better.’ 

What Arsenal fans are going to find difficult to accept is that as a result (apparently) of Wenger’s decision he has gone to Chelsea. Chelsea, let us not forget, are a club for whom he had previously expressed his disdain and whose manager he had spoken about with a good deal of animosity (I'm with him on both counts!). And, of course, he has made them better – so much better that they have quite rightly been installed as favourites for the Premier League (although the signing of Costa has obviously got something to do with that also).

So here’s my take on it. I don’t like Abramovich’s Chelsea or anything they stand for. I can’t stand Mourinho; he’s an arrogant boor. Cesc has gone down in my estimation because he has taken their money as opposed to sticking to previously-stated principles. My motto for this season is very much 'Anyone But Chelsea', so to see him playing so well (yes I know; it was ‘only’ Burnley) in that shirt for the first time earlier this week was exceedingly distressing.  And whilst I abhor Mourinho, I have to accept that he has a pretty good eye for a player...

So we shall just have to grin and bear it; and we’ve got Mesut Ozil. So whilst Fabregas was never going to get the sort of reception from Arsenal fans that the likes of Henry and Pires have received, if he’d signed for 'Anyone But Chelsea' that would have almost certainly been fine. But he’s now going to get the sort of reception reserved for the likes of Adebayor and Nasri. So can we get on with that, guys, but we then need to forget about him. We’ve got our own heroes to get behind. 

Cesc Fabregas, I used to love you, but now I feel nothing.