Fabio Vieira leaves for a chance to get back on track

The diminutive play maker heads back to Portugal on a loan for playing time

Fabio Vieira is set to return to Porto on a season-long loan according to David Ornstein of the Atheltic. This is a straight loan with no option to buy and with Vieira still having a contract through 2027 it doesn’t seem like it fully closes the door on his career at Arsenal but it is a strong signal that the player unlikely to feature often for Arsenal this season.

Vieira just could never quite make the breakthrough at Arsenal playing just 20 total 90s in the Premier League, Champions League, and Europa League over two seasons. He put up decent but below expectations numbers in the start-stop minutes and never quite showed more than flashes of his promise that made Arsenal sign him from Portugal.

A loan with a chance to play more often, back in a familiar place might be something that does Vieira good and helps get his career back on track. Another season where he played less than 1,000 minutes wasn’t going to do anyone any good, even if the good is just putting himself in the shop window for a move to another club next summer.

This is what I wrote when he first signed, from the By The Numbers column that first was published on ArsebolgNews:

Vieira looks to be an exciting player with impressive statistics. The statistics should probably be taken with a bit of skepticism, however.

First, is that he played in several different roles and that can skew things (most notable here is that it probably boosts his attacking numbers and pushes his defensive numbers down).

Second, he is moving from Liga NOS to the Premier League. Liga NOS is not a bad league, it is the 6th strongest according to Club Elo but it has a very heavy tilt towards having 4 good teams, 1 okay team, and then a bunch of teams that would be on par with mid-table Championship quality.

With that out of the way, I still think that this is an exciting (but certainly not a sure thing) type of move. He should have the luxury of not having the pressure to step right into the starting elven right away if he proves not to be ready. My expectations are that he is being signed to bolster the rotation options for the team, most notable Martin Odegaard who doesn’t have a like-for-like replacement on the bench.

Looking back on this, I don’t think I was wrong. I had some skepticism about the numbers and he might translate. I think some of the deeper analysis on how he plays and what he could offer was right. The technical quality was never in doubt and he showed it at Arsenal in his minimal playing time.

This move shouldn’t effect Arsenal’s plan that much right now but it does make the pure numbers in the squad feel a bit off.

With his departure, the only real true right midfielder in the first team that isn’t having to shift from another starting position is Ethan Nwaneri. I think the depth chart looks something like this, overall very strong but a reoccurring theme is the numbers might be a little light.

The transfer window still has a week to go and it might be a real busy one for Arsenal.