HomeSteak well not by much...they both played very little this season, but VIeira was injured more, was involved in less match day squads but got more minutes then ESR. But again, very low numbers, Vieira got like 100 minutes more, 560 vs ESR who only got 474.

but when both got fit, Mikel would use ESR more often than Vieira.

ESR became his "we need a goal" option while Vieira was just "we need to give Ode a rest" option, which ESR could fulfill as well. I believe if we were trailing more games ESR would've seen more minutes.

Gazza M but that anelka sum looks wrong. sure it was low 20s for him

Yeah, remember it being around 23m or so. At least that was what was being reported back then.

Gazza M that's insane.

Gazza M this is Wenger’s doing. Lifecycle management was a disaster. He didn’t build up enough resources to allow himself the flexibility to sell mid-tier players often. And then he just let tons of players run down contracts, or force exits. And then the cherry on top was the end when he was signing an extraordinary number of old men

HomeSteak Arteta prefers Vieira over him, and that says it all

Does he? Lately when we needed something it was ESR who came on rather than Vieira. I think Vieira is on very thin ice with Arteta, could go this summer and if he doesn't will probably play even less next year. At this stage I'd be all on for Nwaneiri taking Vieiras minutes. There is no future here for the Portugeezer

Qwiss rumours were Arteta is unimpressed with him in training. I imagine Arteta is tyrannical. If he sees you eating an extra chicken wing in the canteen, you’re marked for death.

Claudius which one are we talking about? Arteta talked a lot about ESRs change in attitude. And as I stated ESR is the one who got minutes late in the season over Vieira, even if they were limited. I get the feeling ESR has had enough of being a bench warmer. All the reports say Arsenal wont stand in his way if he wants to go, rather than they are looking to sell. It was even reported differently to the Jesus stuff that was Arsenal are open to offers.

As for Vieira I think if he wants to stay and not get boxed out he'd need to turn up to pre-season training in absolutely battle mode, ready to prove himself once and for all. Personally I don't see it though. Think with signings and the emergence of Nwaneiri imminant that Fabio is pretty much done here for intents and purposes.

Qwiss sorry. Was referring to Vieira. Gunnerblog mentioned this a few weeks back. Of course with a lot of things, we can only go by what we see on matches. We have no clue what’s happening the other 5 days

Just an awful awful player, hope he leaves.

Remember how much we loved him 2 season ago?

This is gonna be a summer of lots of noise, I feel, especially with the Euros about to start.

We need to clear out some of these players who will never be more than subs for us (and sparsely used subs at that). If we can actually make some money from them, that will help fund the real targets we should be going after

Burnwinter I wonder if we can re-integrate Tierney in the squad. He was never a bad player just not Zinchenko. It makes more sense to have him than ship him out for that amount.

Nope. He was a decent defender, but quite technically limited. Really no point in keeping these Cedric Soares types. Even if not immediately ready to push for a first team place, I would want to see young prospects like Kiwior in the squad, over older and injury prone players like Tierney.

flobaba Yeah, well it sounds like we'd listen to offers for Kiwior too, and lots of rumors of Milan sniffing around for him. But i agree about Tierney. He was a decent stop-gap for us when we were pushing to get back to the top 4, but not someone who would ever play any kind of a major role in a title chasing side.