• ! ! ! IMPORTANT MESSAGE ! ! !

    Discussions about police investigations

    In light of recent developments about a player from Premier League being arrested and until there is an official announcement, ALL users should refrain from discussing or speculating about situations around personal off-pitch matters related to any Arsenal player. This is to protect you and the forum.

    Users who disregard this reminder will be issued warnings and their posts will get deleted from public.

Monsieur Vieira

Soler

Established Member
Originally posted Monday, 18 July 2005 9:13 AM

A lot has been written about Patrick Vieira in the last couple of days, and, as I suspect, a lot more will be written about our dear departed captain in the coming few days too. I’m going to join the growing list of journalists and wannabe journalists writing something right about … now.

So he’s gone. ‘Vieira-gate’ began its fifth year rather quickly, and rather sooner than usual. The Juventus rumours began in the middle of June, but surely, not? That’s what went through my mind the first day those rumours linking him with a move to Juventus turned up. I scoffed at it. No, there was no possible way he was going. Not now, not this year, not anymore. It slowly turned out that this really was it; he really was going this year. When it dawned on me the other day, seeing him wearing a red <i>Juventus</i> crested t-shirt, I realised that it was true. Patrick Vieira had finally decided to leave Arsenal for good.

I’ll be bluntly honest here and lay the truth out on the table. For about the last year or so, I have been incredibly critical of Patrick Vieira. Sure, I never showed my opinion of him to the Arsenal-Mania public (or a couple of other forums that I frequent), but that is because I was simply tired of re-typing the same thing over and over and over and over to people who, perhaps, just simply did not want to believe that my rather disgruntled attitude toward Patrick was ‘you just being angry at him wanting to leave’ wasn’t the truth.

It was a combination of both. Frankly, I was fed up with him at that point. I know my particular opinion of him means fat diddily squat in the grand scheme of things, but I felt I had to say it, if only to one group of people who probably cared about as much what I had to say about him as Vieira would himself! My opinion of him had dropped dramatically, and I began sprouting such comments that we should’ve sold him, he should have been stripped of the captaincy, he should have been dropped, he should have been playing for the reserves, and so on.

And this sort of attitude toward our much maligned ex-captain continued for a few months. Certainly his, at the time, pretty dismal performances hadn’t helped me stop my verbal abuse toward him, of which most of Arsenal-Mania was utterly oblivious to. It was probably a good thing I never mentioned a fraction of what I had elsewhere here, otherwise I’d have been labelled an idiot.

Indeed, his form did start to pick up as the season slowly drew to a much wanted end. It was of no surprise to me that once Gilberto returned to the team (it was rather ironic how Gilberto had become our gun midfielder, while sitting on his arse doing nothing) Patrick Vieira’s form was gradually on the rise, like the rest of the team. While he was playing well I held my tongue all together, and silently hoped he was back to his old form. Soon, I’d pretty much forgotten about the crap I was writing before. In hindsight it really was pure crap.

I was elated when he scored that penalty, I won’t deny it. Sure, I had been very angry with him eight months prior to that, but when that ball went passed Roy Carroll … it was beyond joy. Ecstasy. It was a moment I will never forget for the rest of my life, and in a way, I was glad it was him he scored it, it was somewhat poetic justice that he was the one who exorcised the demons of 1999 after it was he who got the ball rolling.

There is a point to this non-sequential article, trust me, there is a point. This article, I guess, serves as both an apology to Patrick (even though he will never read it), and as a thank you note to him, for everything he has done for Arsenal in his nine years at the club. I just wanted to stretch it to longer than half a page.

I’m apologising to him for everything I said about him last year, despite nobody who is reading really knowing what I had said. I know some people said, and will continue to, much worse than I did, but it was wrong of me to treat him with such disrespect after everything he had done for us. For that, Patrick, I do apologise to you. I’m glad you would never read such rubbish; it was pretty embarrassing looking back at it with hindsight.

I’m also thanking him again. He has served us so well over the years and served us with pride. We all stuck with him when he was copping criticism left, right and centre in his days of the red card, and I guess he paid us back by sticking around as long as he did, although I wish he had have been the one to lead us out at Ashburton Grove. I’m thanking him for the memories he’ll leave behind forever, such as that beautiful goal he scored against Manchester United in the first double year, or that rocket of a shot against Newcastle, in the same year.

Thanks for all those memories, monsieur Vieira, because I will never forget you. I hope you have plenty of success in Italy, I just hope you aren’t scared of needles.
 
Top Bottom