In considering how Arsenal's midfield might shape up next season - or rather, how we would like it to shape up next season - one question looms large over all others: will Cesc Fabregas still be at the heart of matters come August or will he have departed for Barcelona?

Earlier in the season, there were a few rumours coming out of the club that he could very well be off this summer. Those mutterings seemed to dissipate as the Gunners maintained their title challenge for far longer than most pundits had predicted. However, we still had to cope with the insidious drip-drip-drip of Barca players coming out in the media, saying how much they wanted Fabregas to come and play for his hometown team. In the past few days though, the temperature has risen once again on this particular matter and the portents don’t bode well for the Spaniard continuing to lead the Gunners next season.

Will He Stay? ©ESPN Soccernet

The latest batch of quotes coming from Barcelona officials seem to state that Cesc has "expressed a wish to play for the club", therefore, they will look into signing him. Suggesting that any possible move was instigated the player's desire to join Barca rather than being any of their doing is a new low for a club that seems to delight in tapping up players by proxy.

Of course, we have seen it all before with various Arsenal players but most notably Thierry Henry. The Spanish club systematically used the media to unsettle the player over several seasons. Every summer, Arsenal supporters had to endure the torment of wondering which way the club’s greatest goalscorer would jump. As it turned out, Arsene Wenger managed to hold onto him for the best years of his career and, as lovely as it would have been to have seen him finish his days at Ashburton Grove, he was allowed to go at the right time in his career - at least from an Arsenal point of view.

The same cannot be said of Fabregas if he decides to move on. Whereas we were lucky enough to have Henry during his peak, as good as he has been so far, Cesc’s best days are still ahead of him. He is also the man who Arsene Wenger has chosen to build a team around as part of the Frenchman’s overall strategy of developing a squad from the bottom up over a number of years and to lose him would be a massive set-back.

The problem with Wenger’s masterplan over the past few seasons is not so much that he has put his faith in youth, it is more that it doesn’t account for the transient nature of the modern footballer. The idea that a team that would grow and develop together to become a force for many years to come is a beautiful one but it is a notion that is ultimately flawed by the fact that players tend not to stick around like they used to, particularly if they are any good.

“One club men” have always been a fairly rare breed. It is probably no coincidence that the five most prominent examples still playing in the Premier League today - Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Gary Neville, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher - all were either born or grew up in close proximity to the clubs for which they would later star. Maybe the manager should be looking more towards the likes of Jack Wilshere, Craig Eastmond and Henri Lansbury to be the lynchpins of the next ten years.

Because Fabregas is so central to Wenger’s plans, it is hard to imagine the manager not fighting tooth and nail to keep him. However, it would seem that the broken leg that Fabregas sustained towards the end of the season might hurt Arsenal beyond just his absence in the final weeks of the season. Having undergone most of his recovery in Spain, it is easy to imagine him having his head turned by the media over there and being got at by his fellow Spanish internationals.

We, the little people, don’t get any say in whether he stays or goes - so, in that respect, it is probably better just to ignore the stories and only worry about things when there is something to worry about. We all knew that it was likely that Fabregas would return to Barcelona at some point in his career. It would just be a shame for him to do so before he had led the Gunners to trophy success.

If it happens sooner than we all imagined, some might seek to blame Wenger for not signing better quality players to play alongside him but it would be grossly ungrateful for Fabregas himself to use that argument as an excuse. Cesc owes a huge debt of gratitude to the Frenchman for putting so much faith in him at such a young age. And if the worst does come to pass, we can only hope that Arsenal screw Barcelona for every last euro in the course of the deal because the manager would need to put the proceeds of the sale to immediate and effective use.

The fact of the matter though is that he hasn’t gone yet and is still an Arsenal player - and hopefully that will remain the case. However, his departure, should it happen, would leave a void that needed to be filled and just the thought of it does highlight that the Gunners still look short of quality in midfield, particularly creatively.

Samir Nasri has done more than most in taking a step up in terms of both his individual quality and taking responsibility in the middle of the pitch. Alex Song has also carved out a niche as the most effective defensive-minded midfielder in the squad. But when you look at players like Diaby, Denilson, Rosicky and Walcott, they all seem very much of a muchness in terms of quality and consistency. All have looked decidedly average for large parts of the last season and in some cases you wonder what key individual attributes they actually bring to the midfield, if any.

You then have young players like Aaron Ramsey, Craig Eastmond and returning loanees Jack Wilshere and Henri Lansbury. The first priority for Ramsey is to recover from his injury but the others need assimilating into the squad for the good of their development. How do they get game-time though with so many players seemingly “ahead” of them? The chances are that some of them might go out on loan again but you can’t help wondering whether actually they might be hungrier and better than some of the players who have all too easily been given regular starts.

The one thing that the midfield needs to improve on massively over the coming year is its defensive work. The work rate and level of aggression needs to be vastly increased. As stated, Alex Song is the man upon whose shoulders most of this effort falls at the moment but he cannot do it all on his own. When he got injured at the end of last season his absence was felt almost as much as Fabregas’s. Arsenal supporters have been crying out for a combative midfielder to be added to the squad for a couple of years now and to genuinely improve the squad’s prospects over a long season we have got to hope that Wenger sees it that way too.

In terms of paying for the acquisition, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over any of Diaby, Denilson, Rosicky or Walcott being unloaded as make-weights but you would think that the first two on that list might be the fan’s favourites for the chop were any of the midfield to be sold.

So, the acquisition of a new ball-winner, the pruning of the current midfield and the further development of youngsters like Aaron Ramsey and Jack Wilshere would seem to be the way forward. Again, I don’t think drastic changes are required and neither will what is suggested here cost the earth. But going back to where we started, so much rests on what will happen with Cesc Fabregas and, torturous as it may be, we can only wait and see what happens there.