Patrick Vieira: 'It will be hard but,

[Taxigirl]

we believe in ourselves'.



Patrick Vieira summed it up as simply "a bad night".

Tuesday evening started poorly for the captain. A thigh injury prevented the Frenchman starting the Champions League Group B tie at Dynamo Kiev. Then it got worse. He came on in the 64th minute and had barely touched the ball before the home side grabbed that all-important second goal.

However Vieira helped his side roar forward in the final stages. Thierry Henry gave Arsenal hope with 11 minutes left then Kanu went close and Kolo Toure crashed a shot against the bar in the closing seconds.

Speaking afterwards, Vieira was down but he doesn't think Arsenal are out.

"We have come back with nothing so it is bad night for us," he said. "We are disappointed because we created the chances but we could not take them.

"It is difficult to explain why it happened. Tonight, we played really well and the boys fought until the end. We hit the bar twice, we created chances and the positions we took up were really good. It is disappointing to score only one goal."

The results leaves Arsenal bottom of Group B five points behind Kiev and Inter, three behind Moscow. But Vieira feels it would be wrong to write off Arsenal yet.

"We still have a chance to qualify because mathematically it is still possible," he said. "It is going to be hard but we believe in ourselves.

"The two home games against Moscow and Kiev will be really important for us. We feel the door is still open for us."

[Salem6]

After another night of failure in the Champions League, Arsenal are in danger of crashing out of Europe altogether for another season – though if they finish third in Group B they will be parachuted into the Uefa Cup.



They are currently bottom, three points adrift of Lokomotiv Moscow, after their worst ever start to a Champions League campaign, and the Uefa Cup is now looking a more realistic target than qualification for the knockout stages of this year's Champions League.

In 1999-2000, the Gunners had to parachute into the Uefa Cup, as did Galatasaray, and the two met in a wretched final that ended goalless, the Turkish club triumphing in a penalty shoot-out.

However, the North London club are not resigning themselves yet to an early exit from the lucrative senior competition.

And captain Patrick Vieira has been trying to lift spirits at Highbury after Tuesday's 2-1 defeat in Kiev by Dinamo, whose crossbar the Gunners rattled twice to no avail

Arsenal have not won any of their last eight Champions League fixtures, but realistically they need to win their next three group games to qualify.

Manager Arsene Wenger admitted that his players were "very down" in the dressing-room after the Dinamo defeat, but Vieira said:

"We still have a chance to qualify. Mathematically, anything is still possible so we will believe in it. It's going to be hard but we still believe we have a good chance to go through.

"It's important that we have two home games but we still believe in ourselves and that the door is still open for us, so we will see if we can get through it."

The Gunners will take some encouragement from Newcastle's battling experience last season. The Magpies still made it through from an even worse position, having lost all three of their opening games. Arsenal at least have one point, and so are refusing to give up hope.

The inescapable conclusion is, though, that something happens mentally within the Arsenal squad when the fixture is a European one. And that is a rich irony given the cosmopolitan nature of the Gunners' squad and the European outlook of their French manager.