The loss rate between Fabregas and Vieira would be a telling stat
What do the raw stats show? We played a completely different system in the Vieira days to what we played under Fabregas and they operated in different ways on the pitch. So it’s not a particularly fair direct comparison to make.
I love Fabregas but Vieira just had it all. And on top of his quality on the pitch he was a fierce leader and winner.
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Poor argument given Vieira was playing with better players in a less competitive PL.
Vieira wanted to leave us when we had the likes of Henry, Bergkamp, Pires, Ljundberg etc.
Imagine what he would have thought playing alongside some of the losers we have in this team.
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I’d argue it was more competitive.
In 2001/02, there were a ridiculous number of teams who were top until we eventually won it. As a team, we were quick, we were strong and Vieira was the heart beat of that.
I’m not knocking your post, because I know you’ve thought it out but it really does boil down to how many games were won/lost when Vieira/Fabregas were our respective focal points in midfield.
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The raw stats show Fabregas was far more creative and better final third player and it’s not remotely close.
Vieira did not ‘have it all’, his range of passing and creativity wasn’t very good, nor was his final ball generally.
Fabregas is also a winner, 1 World Cup and 2 European Championships where he had more of a telling contribution than Vieira in Frances wins, he has league titles and cups in Spain and England.
Vieira wouldn’t have won anything if he’d been in a post-Henry/Pires/Sol Arsenal in place of Fabregas.
But Vieira wasn’t a player who’s sole purpose on the pitch was to operate in the final third so I don’t understand why that’s being used as a metric in this argument?
Because on the flip side Vieira was a significantly better retriever of the ball and a much more dominant figure in the midfield.
And Vieira had an excellent range of passing, that facet of his game seems to have been largely overlooked by people over the years. Vieira was a good passer of the ball and he could really ping that ball about.
And the reality is we won nothing for 10 years after Vieira left and Fabregas was a fixture in the teams that followed. The 07-09 team had the ability to win anything and it didn’t.
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This 
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Other than Arsenal/United no one was close to Abrahomivic’s Chelsea, the Liverpool who made 2 CL finals, the upcoming Money City? Who was close in Vieira’s era to those teams? The competition was obviously lower with a weaker Liverpool and maybe Leeds probably next best
Do you not thinking passing to Henry and Bergkamp will be a tad more fruitful than passing to Adebeyor and Bendtner? Do you expect Farbegas is getting as good results with Aluminia, Silvestre, Senderos as he would harness the same results as playing in front of Keown, Adams and Seaman?
Do you actually think Fabregas had teammates as good as Vieira did?
Fabregas himself said when he left ‘the target at Arsenal is 4th place’. Our ambitions had dwindled and it wasn’t because of either midfielder.
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But, wouldn’t you think that’s a rather convenient argument? The reason the likes of Henry, Bergkamp, Adams, Seaman and Keown are held in high esteem is because they won the league. As you say, that wasn’t all down to Vieira, it was because these guys wanted it, too.
It seems, though, that in the same breath that you’re saying Fabregas failed because the players around him were shit. That isn’t really the case, either. As @SRCJJ said, in 2008 we should have won the league at the very least. Maybe Vieira in place of Fabregas would have been the difference- no dropped points at Birmingham City, at home to Liverpool, etc etc.
I’m very confident (while we’ll obviously never really know) that had Fabregas been in our midfield instead of Vieira between 2001 and 2005, we wouldn’t have won quite as much as we did
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Fabregas, no doubt, is the better footballer. He’s the best midfielder we’ve ever had in the 25+ years I remember being an Arsenal fan. Those slide rule passes, 40 yard defence splitting long balls…utterly sensational.
Vieira was probably a step or two behind in terms of pure vision, technical ability etc but the intangible leadership / massive ballsack attributes he had - it sets him apart. I look at the pussies we’ve had in the team, the players who have seen us suffer ignominious defeats 8-2, 6-0 etc. and I just can’t imagine that pussyass mentality would have been so prevalent if we had a Vieira type in our squad. He had great characters around him at the height of our late 90s / early 00s success but irrespective, he’s that very elusive captain type leader that comes around very rarely.
If I could have one player right now out of the two, I’d pick Vieira every single time and twice on Sunday.
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Farbegas and Vieira both played as CMs/number 8s for the majority of their PL careers. Fabregas is simply a far better creative player from midfield. Maybe you could argue Vieira was a 6 though. In turn Fabregas played between an 8, as a 10 and all the way to being the false 9 at Barce/Spain
As for Vieira being a significantly better defender and dominant midfielder. Well should we compare the full performance videos below? Vieira is a wall and bullies players physically but Young Cesc was a well positioned terrier himself. Fabregas’s passes from deep are far superior to anything Vieira has in his locker, most of Vieira’s slightly longer passes are to United players in the below videos where as Fabregas hits them on a sixpence.
Fabregas vs Juve, Chelsea and Bolton
Vieira vs United and Spurs
Henry was world class because he put up world class numbers for goals and assists. Bergkamp was world class because he had world class technique and vision
Fabregas also won the league 3 times in La Liga and the PL. He won the world cup setting up the winning goal in the World Cup final, scoring and assisting numerous times in 2 European Championship Wins, including the winning penalty.
We wouldn’t win the league with Vieira in place of Fabregas in 07/08 given Fabregas was the creative fulcrun.
Maybe if Fabregas is in the midfield between 01-05 we may have won more league titles. I mean we really missed out having Fabregas only feeding Henry for a year, imagine if it was longer. Especially in the years Bergy was slowing down.
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Hmmm, again, I’d say that’s pretty convenient. So we wouldn’t have won the league in a season in which we were close with a player who had won a league title, yet we would have won more with a player who hadn’t won the league?
Fabregas feeding Henry would have been all well and good, but what good is that when you don’t have a marauding midfielder helping out his defence, eating up the ground and you have a lopsided formation with no real protection of the defence?
I think it’s way off the mark to try and say Faabregas isn’t a winner because he didn’t win anything with our Arsenal squad in the barren years. The dood had Denilson alongside him in midfield and a perma crocked RVP up top for a large majority of the time. Fabregas carried that mediocre team even more than Auba carried our shitty ass team this past season.
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Let’s not act like Fab played in a team of scrubs. He came up in a CL finalist team which had Pires, Bergkamp, Henry, Gilberto, Ljubgberg, Reyes etc etc in it.
Then he had a fantastic team with RVP, Adebayor, Hleb, Rosicky, Flamini etc etc and that was a damn good team that should have won things.
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Fabregas was a good defender too, if he plays alongside Silva longer that helps him instead of having Denilson as his partner
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Well that’s another twist isn’t it. Fabregas could taken old versions of Henry, Bergy and Pires to the CL Final and Vieira simply couldn’t
Cesc’s part in 07/08 saw us get more points than Vieira’s title winning side of 97/98. The only sides Vieira was a part of that saw us get more points had peak Henry and Pires absolutely bossing it, alongside Bergkamp, Kanu, Wiltord, Reyes with a defense of Keown, Cashley, Sol, Toure. Plus he had a better partner
Vieira despite having better teamates was part of plenty of sides that only got 70 something points.
And Vieira always had a better partner than Flamini/Denilson too
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I feel like if we had Fabregas earlier, we would have done more in Europe.
It’s no coincidence that we make our first 2 SFs of the CL with a far worse team, once Fabregas was the key midfielder.
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Roy Keane confirmed if there was one midfielder that made him worried it was Vieira as he had the same mindset as him and could handle himself. Fabregas could only lob a pizza 
!?
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