Vieira talks about Cesc and Wenger

Morning all,

it's all about a former captain this morning. Patrick Vieira has been talking a lot about Arsenal and seeing as there's nothing much else going on it's a Vieiratastic blog this morning.

Firstly he has backed Cesc Fabregas as the right man to captain to the site and to reunite the dressing room. He says:

He knows the club really well. He has been there for quite a long time even if he is still young and I think he is the one who can bring everybody together. Because outside it looks like Arsenal are not together.

Splendid. He then goes on to defend Arsene Wenger, saying:

My message is to be patient and calm. He knows what he is doing, of course. Arsene has been fantastic and committed to the club for the last 12 years. Questioning his commitment and quality as a manager is really difficult to understand.

Now, I don't think anyone has questioned Arsene's commitment, nor his past quality, but like any other manager he is judged on the results of his team and at the moment they're not great. He then suggests our lack of cohesion and the poor results aren't due to lack of talent:

I don’t think Arsenal lose because they don’t have the talent. They’ve lost games because they’ve lost the experience.

However, it's not as if the two are directly opposed. That you can't have talent and experience at the same time. He continues:

Arsene has never spent big money and it’s been the same for 10 years. Even the likes of me, Thierry Henry and others — we weren’t big, Arsenal made us big.

The difference is Vieira and Henry arrived into teams which had experience and quality already. The famous defence, Ian Wright, Dennis Bergkamp, Marc Overmars - all quality players who allowed the younger guys to develop without so much pressure on them.

Great as they were would Vieira have become as good as he did if he'd been playing with the equivalent of Alex Song beside him? Would Henry have scored as many goals if he'd been looking for service from Denilson and Diaby? 

He's right in that Arsene has never really spent big money - often his most expensive purchases have been much less successful than he'd like. Reyes didn't really work out, Jeffers, Wiltord did ok for £13m but such is the state of this squad at the present that you'd have him back in the side in a flash (if he were young again, you know what I mean).

What Wenger has done is buy quality for relatively low prices. Sagna and Eduardo are the two perfect examples of that. More or less unknown, pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things, but they both had experience and quality. And I don't think any Arsenal fan (beyond some of the more Champoinship Manager obsessives) has ever advocated him spending £30m on one player, even when he said himself he had the spending power to do that.

We just want more Eduardos and Sagnas and less Songs and Diabys. That's what makes January so interesting as well as so vital. We know all about Arsene's legendary scouting system and impeccable knowledge of players around the world. Can he find us what we need, Eduardo style? We shall just have to wait and see. 

Emmanuel Adebayor (OleOle) is looking for some kind of revenge on Liverpool, saying they 'broke our dreams' last season. Easy at it is to blame Liverpool, and those cock-sucking referees, our failings were ultimately our own fault. Still, the big man says we have to focus on this season and Sunday's game, as I said yesterday, is make or break for the season, no question about it.

Reminding those of you with Arsenal TV that you can see Eduardo's comeback from injury as the reserves play Portsmouth tonight. Fingers crossed it goes well for him. 

Not much else happening so it's worth mentioning that all the Arsenal players, staff and management will be donating a day's wages to the Teenage Cancer Trust ahead of the Liverpool game. There's a video - which you can see here - featuring some of the Arsenal players. Djourou, Clichy and Adebayor makes me laugh, especially Djourou. He looks so mournful, like the Arseblog basset hound almost.

It's a very worthy cause, obviously, so props to everyone if you'd like to make a donation yourself you can do so at the Be a gooner, be a giver website. 

Till tomorrow.