Taylor desperate to see Eduardo shine

The Birmingham defender has been criticised for the challenge which saw the striker suffer a fractured leg and dislocated ankle in last weekend's 2-2 draw.

Eduardo has been told he faces at least nine months on the sidelines — ruling him out of Euro 2008 — although it will take him even longer to get back to his best.

Taylor, who visited the Arsenal star in Selly Oak Hospital, said: "I will be really happy on the day when I see he is back in the Arsenal and Croatia line-up and when he is scoring goals again.

"The injury was terrible enough. When he gets back to fitness and he puts the ball in the net for Arsenal for the first time, we will all feel much better. People will be able to see that accidents like these are the nature of football and you can recover from it.

"I went to see him on Saturday but, unfortunately, he was still recovering from an operation, so first thing on Sunday morning I went to the hospital and he was really good to see me."

Taylor admitted he was worried how the striker would react to his visit, especially as he had heard the magnitude of injuries such as Eduardo's only start to dawn on the patient after they undergo surgery.

"I was mindful of this and I thought maybe he wouldn't want to see me, which would have been fair enough because of the trauma," Taylor told The Independent. "Although there was a language barrier, I just said that I didn't mean him any harm at all and that I hoped he made a quick recovery. He took it on board and nodded.

"I was just really glad we could communicate. He is obviously a really strong man. Since then, I have read in the papers that he would be happy for me to visit him. That's something I'd like to do."

He added: "It is a strange situation, looking in from the outside, watching the news, reading the newspapers. It feels like it is happening to someone else."

After an emotional week, Arsenal's focus will be back on the Premier League title race tomorrow when they entertain Aston Villa in a game which should see Theo Walcott partner Emmanuel Adebayor in attack.

Walcott scored his first Premier League goals against Birmingham last weekend from a right midfield position but the crispness of his finishing, couple with some energetic performances in training this week, has persuaded Arsene Wenger he should replace Eduardo in attack against Aston Villa.

Wenger is short of alternatives up front as Robin van Persie only returned to training today but he is likely to prefer England's youngest ever player to Nicklas Bendtner or the option of using Alexander Hleb in a second striker role.

Villa manager Martin O'Neill believes Walcott can start fulfilling his enormous potential after what has been a frustrating season.

"I know how good he can be, because I went to the game against Birmingham and I left with about nine minutes to go and you could see the contrast between his first-half and second-half performances," said O'Neill.

"All the Arsenal players were affected by the injury in the first half, but once he got the equaliser, the second goal followed a few minutes later. That confidence from scoring the first goal transformed him."

Arsenal are without Tomas Rosicky, Kolo Toure, Johan Djourou, Alex Song and the suspended Emmanuel Eboue for tomorrrow's fixture but Abou Diaby returns and van Persie has an outside chance of a recall to the bench after playing just three games in five months.