SOCCER ANGLES - MICHAEL WALKER:This is someone who has been around at the top level long enough to be 26 or 27, so it feels.

IT WAS one of those moments when you are glad of, rather than tired of, the internet. It came at Bolton’s stadium last Sunday afternoon around the time it was becoming apparent Cesc Fabregas was going to have one of those afternoons that have made him such a vital piece of Arsenal and English football.

What age is he now? That was the thought. There was no specific guess at the time yet when the reality came that Fabregas is 22, it arrived as a shock.

This is someone who has been around at the top level long enough to be 26 or 27, so it feels. The cliché goes that it barely needed saying that Fabregas has maturity beyond his years, but the cliché was wrong. It did need saying.

Sometimes you need to step back and take stock.

“Yes, he’s a 1987 birth,” Arsene Wenger said with a smile afterwards as we discussed a fact of Fabregas’ life as if it were untrue.

By October 2003, five months after his 16th birthday, Fabregas was playing for Arsenal’s first team in a League Cup tie against Rotherham. He was Arsenal’s youngest-ever player. The club was formed in 1886.

Two years on from that and Wenger was dispensing with his number four Patrick Vieira and replacing him with Fabregas. It was a statement of belief in youth that we tend to christen “typically Wenger”, but it was startling then and in retrospect no less so. Fabregas has justified Wenger’s stance but it is still as remarkable as the young man’s age.

After their victory at Bolton, when Fabregas opened the scoring and generally ran the game with a veteran’s understanding of pace and position, Fabregas is now the number four and captain of the Premier League leaders.

Bolton were beaten again in midweek, albeit less convincingly in north London, and Fabregas again delivered a significant goal, the one that made it 2-2.

It took Fabregas’ tally for the season to 14 goals, 11 of them in the league. That put him sixth in the Premier League’s scoring statistics but the five in front – Rooney, Bent, Defoe, Drogba and Torres – are all strikers.

Fabregas is, moreover, top of the assists count with 13.

Add personal injuries to the equation and what you have is someone putting together a body of work to make him footballer of the year, certainly a major contender.

So far others mentioned this season have been Didier Drogba, Wayne Rooney, Craig Bellamy and Richard Dunne. Even though he saved Newcastle game after game, year after year, Shay Given has rarely received so many plaudits.

Frustratingly these things are always voted for too early for the season to be seen as a whole but in the part that we have to review, each of the above merit consideration.

The thing is that of them all, only Rooney, who is 24, is close to Fabregas in years. Drogba will soon be 32.

Bellamy is 30, so is Dunne. Given is 33.

If we agree that Carlos Tevez’s run of form takes him into the vote, then it is worth pointing out that Tevez will soon be 26.

It is only one detail but it makes you think about the future, where Fabregas will be as a footballer aged 27 and 28.

Barcelona is the flippant answer, but that is not really the point. Fabregas is ambitious, and he has said he will question Arsenal’s ambition if it does not match his own, but it is his development as a player that is the issue.

He could turn out to be truly great.

That seemed unlikely when he was becoming embroiled with spats with Mark Hughes and Hull City a while ago but the four-month injury that knocked out Fabregas last season, he has said, made him re-evaluate. By his own admission, he has grown up – quite something at 22.

There remains a spiky side to him, though, and not necessarily physical. He can tackle hard when it is required but there is that confrontational aspect to his character too. In an interview published this week, Fabregas hints at a problem with Frank Lampard over the Chelsea player’s assertion that the Spaniard is a “cry baby”.

Their relationship will be tested again soon, when Arsenal go to Stamford Bridge early next month. It is the third of four Premier League games in a fortnight that will tell us where Arsenal are in title terms – it’s Aston Villa away first, then Manchester United at home, with Liverpool at home last.

They should also tell us much about the scope of the new “personality” in the team Wenger has been referring to.

Cesc Fabregas is an essential part of it – he is the face of it – but even at 22 he is not new.

Manchester police face tough job

A FULL five days before the game, Greater Manchester police warned yesterday of the possibility of further violence between United and City fans in the second leg of the League Cup semi-final at Old Trafford.

Their caution is well-placed. Those who travel to Old Trafford and find it quiet and mild-mannered should spend a day – or not – travelling with United’s away fans, or indeed a lot of away fans. Football hooliganism has not gone away, it’s just diversified. There will be 9,000 City fans at Old Trafford. All the best with that one, officer.

When is a foul not a foul?

ARSENE WENGER was still bemused yesterday. Forty-eight hours on from William Gallas’s damaging tackle on Bolton’s Mark Davies, Wenger continued to be amazed that others were bringing it up. Wenger questioned the impartiality of those broadcasting the tackle and insisted once again that it was mistimed, not malicious. New Bolton manager Owen Coyle backtracked a little from Wednesday’s “assault” comment.

Wenger has an understandable view that his team receive the odd kick now and again. How many times have we heard that the way to beat Arsenal is to “get in their faces”? Quite a lot.

What has been overshadowed is the referee’s role in all of this. Alan Wiley was no more than 15 yards from the incident, which was clearly a foul, yet waved play on. It was a staggering non-decision, one reason why it’s still being talked about. Oh, and Arsenal scored within the next five seconds.

Refereeing is so bad you now remember the good decisions, like Andre Marriner’s at Goodison Park last Saturday when he awarded a penalty against Manchester City’s Micah Richards for tugging at the shirt of Louis Saha. Now, if other refs follow, shirt-pulling might return to what it used to be, a foul.