Patrick Vieira was willing to share praise for his entire team after their 0-0 draw with Manchester City, commending each player from Vicente Guaita in goal to Wilfried Zaha in attack.
Here’s what he said in his post-match press conference on a few key names.
Vicente Guaita
He was fantastic. I think his game management was excellent. When we play against the quality of those teams you have to be really good in those departments and the way we managed the game was excellent.
We managed to frustrate them and needed a really good performance from the goalkeeper to Wilfried Zaha up-front as a No.9. Everyone worked hard.
Conor Gallagher
Him, Cheikhou [Kouyaté] and Jeff [Schlupp] as well, the three midfielders maybe need a couple more days off than everyone else! They ran a lot… and didn’t give up, and this is a really good sign for us.
Today we showed as a team we’re improving. One of the challenges was to accept that at times we won’t have possession so we need to work hard to get the ball back. If we manage to understand that [in every game] and can be consistent we will improve.
I can’t stop him! I don’t want to stop him. This is the energy that pushes the fans to be behind us and the fans were excellent. The last 10 minutes were really difficult but the fans and support made it easy to manage the last 10 minutes. Conor, this is his strength and this is why we love him.
Cheikhou Kouyaté
Cheikhou will play for a long, long time because he looks after himself really well and has the physique that will allow him to play for a couple of years. In the second-half he was excellent, coming out, putting on pressure, winning free-kicks and he was really good with the ball.
Wilfried Zaha and Tyrick Mitchell
That [Zaha's defensive work] is really important, especially when going through a difficult period. He managed to win free-kicks, he worked really hard, coming to support and helping Tyrick, running behind Kyle Walker and being there to play the two v two. He’s in a really good period since he came back from AFCON – he’s gone to a difficult level and hopefully will be like that until the end of the season.
Tyrick is a young player coming through the Academy so has watched Wilfried a lot. Wilfried has this experience and character to help him grow as a player. I believe this relationship between the two is getting better and better.
