Cesc Fabregas Praises Arsenal's Long-Term Vision

Cesc Fabregas knows what a project looks like when it’s built to last. He lived one at Arsenal as a player. Now he sees another unfolding from the stands – and is trying to recreate it in his own dugout.

Speaking at the Emirates Stadium after Arsenal’s latest outing, the former captain paid a pointed tribute to the club’s hierarchy for staying the course with Mikel Arteta when the easy option would have been to panic.

“The club in general, starting from seven, eight years ago when they first started with this project,” Fabregas said, “what Arsenal did, especially in the difficult moments, it doesn’t exist.”

Fabregas hails Arsenal’s patience

Fabregas, who made 303 appearances for the Gunners, highlighted how rare it is in the modern game for a board to resist the urge to sack a manager at the first sign of turbulence. Arsenal did the opposite. They absorbed the noise and stayed aligned to a long-term vision.

He recalled conversations inside the club last season. “I told Edu, I told Andrea [Berta] when I came last year to a Champions League game, I said congratulations to the whole club for the patience, for sticking together, for sticking to the plan,” he explained.

The Spaniard then reeled off the context that many now gloss over. “When for three years in a row, correct me if I’m wrong, finished eighth, eighth, eighth, fourth year nearly Champions League, it was a big disappointment, Tottenham came, you finish fifth, but you keep going because you have a plan, because you have an objective, because you have progression, you keep going forward.”

Those seasons, once framed as evidence of stagnation, are now being recast as the growing pains of a team and a manager finding their level. Arsenal’s refusal to flinch has become a reference point for others.

A warning for a trigger‑happy era

For Fabregas, the contrast with the wider industry is stark. He sees a sport addicted to short-term fixes, and he doesn’t like what it does to teams.

“We lack this in football today,” he said. “You lose three games, change the coach, he was playing one style, now you play another, at the end of the day I don’t believe in this a lot.”

Styles ripped up. Dressing rooms reset. Identities blurred. That, in his eyes, is where so many clubs go wrong. Arsenal, he argues, chose another path: continuity, clarity and a manager trusted to grow with his squad.

“I think Mikel has done a tremendous job,” Fabregas added. “So I can only wish them the best, really.”

What strikes him most is not just the tactical work, but the human core of the group Arteta has assembled. “Most of the group, these guys now you talk to them, I don’t know… they’re good guys, they want to play good football, they are respectful, you can see how they stick to the plan all the time. Really, I’m super happy to come back here and smell this feeling.”

Como’s blueprint borrowed from north London

Fabregas is not just an admirer from afar. Now part of the project at Como, he is trying to transplant some of those same principles into a very different environment.

“I’m very lucky I’m in a project, of course with much lower level, the history, everything,” he admitted, “but we’re trying to look at the stability Arsenal had, the values, the culture that they are bringing.”

Como do not have Arsenal’s resources or global reach, but Fabregas believes they can mirror the discipline and patience that underpinned the Gunners’ revival. Culture first, results as a consequence.

Big dates ahead for Arsenal and Como

Arsenal’s next test of that culture comes with silverware on the line. Arteta’s side face Manchester City in the Community Shield in Cardiff on Sunday, 16 August, a familiar early-season gauge against the standard-bearers of English football.

Six days later, they begin their Premier League title defence against newly promoted Coventry City, a fixture that will immediately probe how ready they are to carry the weight of champions.

On the same Sunday that Arsenal meet City, Fabregas will be locked into his own touchline duties. Como are scheduled for a double-header of friendlies against Liverpool, the first behind closed doors before supporters are welcomed in for the second.

Those matches will serve as a tune-up for Como’s Serie A opener against Udinese the following Saturday – another small step in a project Fabregas hopes can one day be spoken about with the same respect he now reserves for Arsenal’s.