Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas is determined to take the season one game at a time and refuses to get caught up in talk of winning the Premier League title (Arsenal 11/2 to win Premier League).
The 23-year-old was part of the Arsenal side that moved back up to second place with a 3-0 victory over Manchester City on Sunday – a result helped by the early sending off of Dedryck Boyata at Eastlands.
The Gunners look back to somewhere near top form, after losing back-to-back Premier League matches against West Brom and Chelsea, with victory over Birmingham City and the weekend triumph over Roberto Mancini’s men.
The north Londoners also hammered Shakhtar Donetsk 5-1 in the Champions League last week and are now tied with the two Manchester clubs on 17 points in the race for the English top-flight crown.
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger believes that his young side is now beginning to show more maturity after the two set-backs just a couple of weeks ago, but Fabregas prefers just to focus on upcoming events rather than where the club might stand in May.
“It looks like after every win you have to say ‘oh, you are more mature than last year’, but it is just one more game, let’s not get carried away,” he told Arsenal TV Online. “Now we have the (Carling Cup) game against Newcastle, which is the most important one at the moment.
“The time to talk about if we have matured or are better than before will be at the end of the season.”
Wenger has always cut his cloth according to the club’s finances and prefers to bring young players through rather than spend vast sums of money on expensive transfers.
Fabregas is still only 23 and is part of a group of youngsters that, Wenger believes, will bring silverware back to the club in the coming years.
Whether or not the Spaniard is part of that group in the future is open to question as rumours of a move to Barcelona will not go away.
But the World Cup-winning midfielder is determined to let his football do the talking this season and strive to turn the potential of the team into a successful unit who are capable of challenging on all fronts (Fabregas 18/1 to be Champions League top scorer).
“In football, you know what people will say when you win, and you know what people will say when you lose,” he said. “You just have to keep focused on what you do, in training and in the game, give everything for the team and the rest is not up to you.
“We have a very good team, with lots of young players. We have to make it a great time by winning things.”
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