Do any of the coaches at Arsenal actually teach their young charges how to defend? Bearing in mind that virtually the whole staff turned out at the back in their playing days, you would have thought so, wouldn't you?

I've just watched the Burnley game and it's interesting to see how the next generation make exactly the same mistakes as the first team. There must be a reason for that. Forgetting for a minute about their keeper having a blinder (I bet he's crap next week) and the fact that Nicklas Bendtner couldn't finish an ice cream, the same things let the side down every single time.

The biggest, most obvious fault, is players not 'going with their man'. It literally happens all the time. Whenever we concede a goal and you look at the replay, you can play 'spot the ball-watcher'. There's often more than one.

For the first goal Burnley played a fairly lazy looking one-two, and Keiran Gibbs obviously wasn't quite sure what to do. By the time he realised that perhaps tracking with his man and cutting out the cross might be quite a good idea, the ball was in the back of the net. There's almost an 'Oh, do I have to?' air about it all. Are defensive skills all of a sudden tiresome and old hat?

Nasri and Walcott are just as bad, but you can almost forgive them as they are 'wingers' (George Graham wouldn't!), but Clichy does exactly the same. If I was an opposition right back with a penchant for getting forward, I'd be quite happy playing Arsenal every week. They could quite easily make you look good.

For the second goal Mark Randall actually decided to cover the danger, which was unusual in itself, but then having got there, he obviously thought that winning the ball and clearing his lines was just too much. Has he attended the Denilson School of Tackling? Whenever he gets near enough to win the ball, all he succeeds in doing is giving away a foul. They're both defensive midfield players!

That seems to be the problem. Wenger like to fill his defence with ball playing wingers hoping that they'll somehow pick up the rudiments of defence as they go along. Bearing in mind that for almost 50% of most matches the opposition has the ball, you would have thought that defensive skills are equally important, or am I missing something?

What happens in training? If anyone was playing in a small sided game against international stars doing step-overs and playing one-twos, wouldn't you, by default, learn to defend against it? So, why are we so clueless? Do they play first team to score ten goals wins? What happened to the good old days when George Graham would put his back four through pack drill? If you didn't like it, you didn't play. The midfield as well. He was quite happy to drop Thomas, Rocastle and Limpar and play Morrow, Selley and Hillier. You obviously wouldn't necessarily want that, but the message was quite clear all the same.

The other thing was peer pressure. I'm sure if you decided not to go with your man, or carelessly avoided putting a tackle in, then Bould, Adams & Co would make it perfectly plain what they thought of you at half time. Would that happen now? Why not ask William Gallas?