Former Arsenal captain Patrick Vieira has given his verdict on the club’s biggest problem of the last few years.
Patrick Vieira has highlighted a general decline from Arsenal ever since Arsene Wenger left the club in May 2018.
The former midfielder was part of Wenger’s legendary teams from the early 2000s. He won three Premier League titles, famously captained Arsenal’s Invincibles to unbeaten success in 2003/04, and is arguably one of the greatest players in the English top-flight’s history.
Now Vieira has linked up with fellow Gunners legends Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp to help Spotify founder Daniel Ek buy the club from the Kroenke family.
Patrick Vieira “Arsenal have lost their identity. It's very sad to see. They deserve so much more than this.” pic.twitter.com/SQ7oujRyTP
— AFTV (@AFTVMedia) May 23, 2021
But even if Ek eventually takes control, Vieira is under no illusions. The Frenchman knows it’s only just the start of a major rebuilding job for a club that has lost its identity over the years.
“What’s going wrong at Arsenal is not just this year, it’s the last couple of years,” Vieira told the Daily Mail.
“When you look at Arsenal in the Arsene Wenger era, you always had this kind of figure, a strong personality, who could represent the club.
“Through the years, Arsenal has lost a little bit of identity, not just on the field but off the field as well.
“When I talk about identity on the field, in my time at Arsenal you had players like Tony Adams, Martin Keown, Nigel Winterburn, Lee Dixon, who had been at the club for years.
“When you got there, those players made you understand the club’s DNA, what Arsenal means. Through the years, Arsenal has lost this kind of identity.
“People now realize that in losing Arsene, they lost more than a manager or coach. Arsene had a massive impact on Arsenal in every department.
“Since he left maybe there wasn’t the right people to fill all the positions that Arsene was doing.
“They brought a scouting guy [Sven Mislintat] from Germany who stayed a little bit. They brought this kind of CEO or sporting director [Raul Sanllehi] from Spain who didn’t stay very long.
“Losing Arsene and this kind of person coming into the club did not give the club the stability it needed to build a new era, a new foundation.
“It’s like building a house. You want to build a house on solid foundations.
“That is the biggest problem in the last couple of years at Arsenal.”
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