Is it time to cut some of the old guard loose? This mornings rumors have Juve coming to London to discuss Patrick Vieira and/or Robert Pires moving to Turin. The back end of a fantastic run of success is always an interesting time for a club. Get rid of your veteran stars too early and the fans wonder if you have any idea what you're doing - get rid of them too late and they have no value left on the transfer market. Of course, letting players of this calibre move on also requires that the team have replacements lined up.
Vieira - assuming that Arsenal doesn't have an immediate replacement in mind, it would appear that there is no obvious replacement on hand. Flamini, at this point in his career, is a good back-up but based on last year's performance is no more than a squad player at this point. Fabregas is in a similar place - he shows excellent potential but he definitely wore down as the season progressed and the level of intensity picked up. Throw in the loss of Edu to Valencia and it seems that Vieira should stay at least one more year.
Pires - quite the opposite situation here. Arsenal seem blessed with riches on the left wing. Jose Reyes is adept on the left and needs to find his place in the starting XI. Alexander Hleb is a highly paid wing midfielder and needs some playing time as well. Throw in Clichey and Quincey who are both on the rise and could use more playing time and the runway seems to be in place to allow Arsenal to cash in on Pires before he loses all of his value (think SAF is wishing he'd done the same thing with Scholes?)
Neither move seems necessary but for an organization that is more focused on sustaining success over the long term than it is on sentimentality, the Pires move is the right one.
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