As Patrick Vieira considers taking his most dramatic early exit yet, this time out of English football altogether, he may be heartened to hear that rivals, as well as team-mates, are insisting he should stay.

This even includes Liverpool's Dietmar Hamann, the victim of the tackle which led to Vieira's second red card in three days at Highbury on Monday. Hamann believes Vieira should have been booked for the foul on him, but not the earlier spat with Jamie Carragher.

"It would be bad for English football if he left," said the German international. "He is a fantastic player and not a dirty one. He plays the game in a fair-minded way."

In any case, even if Vieira left Arsenal, short of signing for the Priory Clinic XI, it is difficult to imagine where he could go in search of greater understanding. In Europe's main leagues, a man of his combative instincts would be unlikely to complete 90 minutes of any game and in Italy, he would be lucky to survive the pre-match warm-up.

Vieira understands that, which is central to his frustration, feeling forced out of his natural environment by referees he believes are singling him out. But he finds himself playing in England at a time when beleaguered referees are trying to second-guess the assessors who govern them.

The English game is the fastest and most physical in the world, which used to invite a matching level of tolerance and discretion from officials who tried their best to distinguish between malevolent fouls and mistimed ones. Now those qualities have been reclassified as vices for referees who have been instructed to take a zero tolerance attitude to foul play.

Vieira, who was sent off only once in each of the previous two seasons, made a serious attempt to temper his game after his red card against West Ham last October, when he received a six-match ban not for his tackle but for spitting at Neil Ruddock.

To a degree, Vieira has even managed to temper his temper. And he was so confident that he could offer further proof that he was reformed this season that he struck a bet with his best friend, Olivier Dacourt, that he would have the better disciplinary record of the two of them.

Dacourt, in Germany preparing for Leeds' Champions League qualifier against Munich 1860 tonight, says: "I phoned Pat after the Sunderland game to tell him that he would never win the bet. He managed to joke then but he must be very upset now."

If Dacourt could be expected to defend his friend, Vieira's case is significantly helped by the more independent support of Sunderland manager Peter Reid and Liverpool's Gerard Houllier, both of whom insisted he was desperately unlucky.

Vieira apologised to Arsenal colleagues after losing his head at Sunderland on Saturday when pulled back by Darren Williams. But though flailing an arm invited a red card, he clearly did so not with the intention of injuring an opponent but to free himself to continue an attack. This is not to build a case for Vieira's canonisation. In both games, he lost emotional control and he has a lightning-fast temper.

His expectorating performance against Ruddock was an example of that. And as well as a sending-off against Charlton two years ago for elbowing an opponent he has been fined for making a V-sign to Sheffield Wednesday fans and escaped punishment and remarkably, retribution, after appearing to butt Roy Keane last season.

After six red cards, Vieira is one sending-off away from joining Vinnie Jones at the head of the Premiership dishonours list. Given the respective talent of the two players, this seems a ludicrous prospect.

A pattern has developed in English football in which a flurry of red cards in the opening weeks of the season becomes barely a trickle later on. By Christmas, the sort of tackle with which Vieira caught Hamann may not even bring a harsh look from a referee. Arsenal are just hoping he is still around to reap the benefit.