Cesc Fabregas declared his nightmare return to the Nou Camp as one of the worst moments of my life and accepted full blame for Arsenal's Champions League exit at the hands of Barcelona
Cesc Fabregas declared his nightmare return to the Nou Camp as "one of the worst moments of my life" and accepted "full blame" for Arsenal's Champions League exit at the hands of Barcelona.
Fabregas, returning to his boyhood club for the first time, inexplicably tried to backheel the ball to Jack Wilshere on the edge the Arsenal penalty area, but gave it straight to Andres Iniesta ufffd who set up Messi to put Barcelona ahead in first-half stoppage time.
The Spain World Cup winner, substituted with 12 minutes remaining, was left bitterly disappointed by his own contribution after coming back from a hamstring injury.
"I take full blame for the result tonight," Fabregas said on his Twitter account.
"One of the worst moments of my life. I apologise."
The Gunners had Robin van Persie controversially sent off as they were knocked out by the Spanish giants for the second successive season, with a 3-1 reverse meaning a 4-3 aggregate exit.
Moments after an own goal from Sergio Busquets had cancelled out Lionel Messi's fine opener following Fabregas' mistake, Van Persie was dismissed by Swiss referee Massimo Busacca.
The Dutchman had already been booked in the first half and was shown a second yellow card for lashing the ball towards goal after a marginal offside call which the Arsenal striker claimed he could not hear.
Van Persie labelled his dismissal "a total joke". Just a second elapsed between Busacca blowing his whistle and the Holland forward striking the ball.
"I cannot understand that view from the ref," the Arsenal striker said.
"If there were four, five, six seconds in between, you can make a check (for offside). One second, it's a joke.
"I tried to explain there were 95,000 people jumping up, how can I hear the whistle?
"We feel betrayed a bit, when it was 1-1 it was all to play for and in my opinion this referee killed the game."
