The transfer window may only have closed recently but that has not stopped momentum steadily building behind reports that Cesc Fabregas could be poised to return to Barcelona this summer.

Arsenal's captain is linked with a move to Camp Nou every few months of course, but sources in both England and Spain appear to suggest that this could be the year. Writing in the Observer, Paul Hayward certainly feels that Arsenal have a real struggle on their hands to convince Fabregas that his career would be best served by staying at Emirates Stadium.

"Arsenal's cognoscenti say that when Cesc Fabregas plays a pass 'the ball has information on it'. This means that the little maestro is not just playing his own game but is controlling his team-mates by imposing his sense of space and its possibilities on them.

"Only special footballers can shape the careers of others by orchestrating play on their behalf. The slipped Fabregas pass will force a lesser colleague to abandon his own idea of where a run might take him and submit instead to the captain's geometrical brilliance. This is a majestic sight but it is also where Arsenal's problem starts. Fabregas is the boy who was forced to take over the class.

"Which other team does this choreographic skill evoke? Correct: Barcelona, the club of Fabregas's blood. To some in Catalonia the quest to bring him home is akin to Greece's campaign to repatriate the Elgin marbles. There is real hope this time, with Arsenal losing home and away to Chelsea and Manchester United and Fabregas senior telling Catalan radio on Thursday that the time to discuss his son's future would be 'at the end of the season'.

"Wenger's great Arsenal project demands endless faith from the congregation. Do not forsake me, he begs. No one carries a heavier burden of devotion than Fabregas, the player who best exemplifies Wenger's vision of how the game ought to be played. The trouble is, the manager asks the lost boy of Catalonia not only to stay true to somebody else's scheme but to gamble with his own shot at greatness."

Hayward concludes:

"For Cristiano Ronaldo and Fabregas to return to Iberia inside 12 months would establish a symbolic turning point for the Premier League. The world's best teenage talent can be lured here but maybe they cannot be persuaded to stay more than five years, tops. A spectacular reason is needed for Fabregas to ignore the siren call of home again. Arsenal have three months to find it."

From Arsenal's brightest talent to a player that has generated real cause for concern this season. Theo Walcott has only completed 90 minutes on one occasion and Michael Calvin, writing in the Sunday Mirror fears that the former prodigy's career will be a story of unfulfilled promise.

"I’m not the only one ­hoping that the doomsday scenario, of a once-in-a-generation talent remaining unfulfilled, doesn’t come to pass. English football needs ­Walcott to succeed more than ever. He’s an antidote to the ­toxins in its system.

"Intelligent, ­likeable and ­understated, he’s everything certain international ­colleagues are not. But let’s face facts. He can’t go to another World Cup on a whim as a manager’s mascot. He may be the youthful face of Fabio Capello’s regime, but if Il Capo valued boyish looks and enthusiasm above all, he’d recruit from the cast of High School Musical 3.

"His intelligence makes him a fast learner, but he needs game time to ­perfect his craft. Constant injury means he’s trapped in a cycle of ­renewal and rehabilitation. As a result, he’s chasing the ghost of the player everyone assumed he would become.

"His pace is frightening but, too often, he betrays his inexperience by making the wrong run or the wrong pass at the wrong time. It’s not too late for his story to have a happy ending, but time is running out. Fast."