Whisper it, but Crystal Palace are in the Premier League’s top 10 with 10 games to go and, if they can stay there until the end of the season, it will be the first time they have achieved a top-half finish.
If they can do that, then I wonder if Arsenal might just look at such an achievement by Eagles boss Patrick Vieira and, if they themselves have finished in the Champions League spots, decide to go all Invincible by bringing home the club legend at Mikel Arteta’s expense.
I’m not dismissing what Arteta is doing — I asked him to prove he could get Arsenal into the top four and, with three games in hand and superior points on some of their rivals, he is looking good for that.
But I’m convinced Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe and Gabriel Martinelli would all learn more about heart, desire and winning with ruthless efficiency in a week under Vieira than they would in three seasons under the Spaniard.
And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the powers that be at the Emirates weren’t thinking the same.
Vieira has gone under the radar as a manager.
I went to New York when he was there four or five years ago and I enjoyed listening to what he said about management.
Obviously, he has gone through the Manchester City system as well.
He didn’t have a great time in France but, while he was born there, he was made in the Premier League and that’s what stands him in such good stead to manage here.
I said at the start of the season that, if he could get Palace into the top 10, it would qualify him further up the league with a club which has a bigger budget and greater expectation.
I guarantee as well that Arsenal fans will want it at some point, that the board will want it at some point and if it were sooner rather than later he would inherit those three mercurial players and give them all more spirit, more feistiness.
He’d show them how to be routine winners.
Arteta was a very good player and he won things, of course, but Vieira is a different beast.
And I’m confident he is someone who could turn Saka, Smith Rowe and Martinelli into not only very good players for Arsenal but into potential Premier League legends with what he could give them.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Arsenal weren’t tracking his progress and if at some point they didn’t decide to pull the trigger on Arteta to take Vieira back home.
It will all depend on him getting Palace into the top 10, though, that’s the first glass ceiling he has to break through.
