A newspaper mocked up a photograph of Patrick Vieira in a Tottenham Hotspur shirt this week. They called it the picture all Arsenal fans would hate to see. A decade ago, maybe. Even five or six years. But now? “Bring it on” will doubtless be the attitude in the red half of north London at news that Vieira might be heading back to London from Inter Milan. Tottenham sign a 33-year-old former Arsenal player on a free transfer, after his career as one of the leading midfielders in Europe flat-lines in Italy. Not exactly the traditional precursor to a return to the glory days at White Hart Lane, is it?
Vieira was a wonderful player for Arsenal but his departure dates from the time when Arsene Wenger made it his business each season to prove his critics wrong. There has been precious little of that lately. These days, Wenger is often on the wrong side of the argument. Philippe Senderos was, after all, not good enough. The central midfield did, as predicted, miss the influence of Matthieu Flamini.
Yet when Wenger sold Vieira, his judgement was near-perfect. He knew the player capable of influencing a title campaign had departed anyway. What remained was a different Vieira, nowhere near as forceful, his focus altered by the sense of missed opportunity with Real Madrid some years previously. It was the reason that, in 2005, Wenger took the money from Juventus.
Vieira won the title that season — although Juventus’s crown was later removed as punishment for the Moggiopoli scandal involving the selection of favourable referees — but he was unrecognisable as the driving force behind Arsenal’s unbeaten Premier League campaign. Arsenal defeated Juventus on their way to the Champions League final that year and Vieira was anonymous. In the summer he moved to Inter Milan for half the transfer fee collected by Arsenal.
He has since been a peripheral figure. Inter have won back-to-back titles but Vieira has struggled with injury and is no longer first choice. He featured in just three Champions League games last season and in the most recent — the 2-0 defeat to Manchester United — was substituted at half-time. His last competitive start for France was on September 12, 2007, a home defeat to Scotland, in which he was also taken off with 21 minutes remaining. This is the player that Tottenham are getting; not the inspirational powerhouse of his peak Arsenal years.
Far from being the transfer that will unnerve Arsenal supporters, it merely underlines how far Tottenham must travel to catch up with their rivals. Arsenal have not won the title since Vieira’s departure, but that is a failure to replace the player he was, not the player he is. Even with Arsenal’s star on the wane — they will be the club Manchester City target this season, making the proposed sale of Emmanuel Adebayor a strange one — Tottenham can only hope to extract one last squeeze of juice from their cast-offs. Vieira in their shirt is not much to be afraid of.