Approaching his second season at the club, Vieira is hoping the strong foundations already set can provide the perfect platform to push on.
“I arrived at the football club and the foundation of that club was solid and strong,” he said. “The club had a manager who was there for five years, so they managed to build something which allowed me to come with new ideas and a new way of working.
“I found everything there to work really well. The support from the chairman, the sporting director, the fans – we were all together to try and take the club to a different level.
“The ideas that we had and what we wanted to achieve was really clear, and we knew that during the season we would go through some difficult periods, and it was important for us to stay together.
“We managed to go through those periods quite well, and that allowed us to build the confidence to keep playing well and compete in the Premier League.”
Now Vieira says the focus must be balancing the exciting young players with more experienced heads in the dressing room.
“What we did really well was that we had some young players last year, but we had some experienced players,” he explained. “The balance between youth and experience was really good.
“The experience allowed those young players to express themselves. It’s important this year to find the right balance. When you are young, sometimes you get carried away by success and then you lose yourself and you put the team into difficulties.
“Experienced players always know how to manage those kinds of situations. We have some special talent, really young talent in this football club. But that talent will not be enough to let us compete in the Premier League.
“We will need experience to be competitive.”
