Vieira: Defence cost us dearly

Patrick Vieira today blamed poor defending for Arsenal's disappointing 3-1 defeat against Bayern Munich last night

But the France midfielder refused to write off his team's chances of reaching the Champions League quarter-finals after Kolo Toure's lastminute goal gave them a glimmer of hope.

And amazingly he claimed that Bayern were not a better team than Arsenal last night.

"It is frustrating to concede too many goals and we need to work on that as a team," he said today.

"We don't blame any one person for the goals - we need to defend better if we want to progress. We had a lot of big players missing in Munich - Dennis Bergkamp, Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole. We also missed their experience.

"Sol is a quality player, but don't blame Kolo Toure and Pascal Cygan.

"Yes, Sol is important to the team, but he was not there and we have to cope. It is frustrating because Bayern were not better than us.

"We didn't play with our usual freedom but the door is still open and we have to believe in ourselves - then we can do it.

"At 3-0 down, it would be 95 per cent that you have no chance of going through. Now we have hope with that last-minute goal. It will still be difficult, but not impossible.