I have just been thinking what made the early years of Wenger so good compared to the last five, and I am not even really complaining about the last five. We all know we do play the best football in the league which does make us as Arsenal fans quite privileged and we have come close on a fair few occasions to winning something. But when we started off Wenger’s tenure in charge we got used to being favourites to win the league or a cup every year (well second favourites we never seemed to win the media over as a favourite for anything, it always seemed to be ManUre or then Chelski.)

So as I was saying I’ve been thinking what made the early years of Wenger so good compared to the last five and I think it’s pretty obvious to most fans that it was George Graham. I know we had one manager between Graham and Wenger but Wenger inherited George Graham’s Arsenal (plus one very good addition in Dennis Bergkamp. Thank you Bruce!) and George Graham’s Arsenal were a well organised well drilled Arsenal that could score any type of goal required.

I saw George’s Arsenal as a youngster between the ages of say 8-14 so my views may be a bit romanticised but this is also how my old man reminds me it was. But what I’m getting at is that Wenger inherited a very well drilled defence that was very effective at both defending and attacking set pieces. From what I can think of the only players that I feel matched this philosophy and qualities were Sol Campbell, Patrick Vieira & Big Philippe Senderos - all strong, influential, win at any cost type players. When these players integrated with the already solid back five of Seaman, Winterburn, Adams, Bould/Keown & Dixon it was a base for what Wenger then went on to create. Which was a fantastic attacking team that could win one-nil with ease and with no worries of conceding at times.

If you think about it the influence of George Graham’s Arsenal would not really have been lost until Keown had left. The back five had been drilled and drilled at defensive training and set pieces all the time in his era, so they would have all this left in them. It would still come naturally to them and would have rubbed off on to all the newcomers. While Wenger was adding to it with healthy eating and sport sciences he did not keep the same thing going in his training. As we slowly lost the remaining Graham players and added Wenger’s philosophy of “play to peoples strengths, don’t highlight their weaknesses” we have ended up losing our old main strength of a solid base to push on from.

Imagine if we still had that hardcore base of a defence, And I don’t mean the actual players, I mean the way they had been trained and drilled mixed with the attacking players we currently hold. I have high hopes that players like Thomas Vermaelen can help us back to the days when we were confident we could hold a one or two goal lead. I am very impressed with the defensive purchases we have made over the last two summers, they seem to have a certain determination about them but I’m sadly not confident they will get the proper training required to make us a solid unit at the back.

All I need to prove my point is how good Sol Campbell looked when he came back for his short stint last season compared to the rest of the defence, and not only his positional and defensive play. He had a determination and spirit about him that looked out of place in our current team. This is a player that basically retired two seasons ago and took a job with a league two side, but because of his previous training came into a top Premiership team and deserved his place over the others we had at the time.

I think we need to take heed from American football and hire a defensive coach/co-ordinator that can take all the defensive players in the team and drill them back into a solid unit again. Wenger can carry on as is with the attacking players of our team because it is beautiful to watch and can be very effective. I know it probably wouldn’t work as you need one person, a main man in charge and I really don’t want Arsene to leave as he has brought me and I’m guessing many others a lot of pleasure over the past 10 years. But please get in someone alongside Wenger to do something with the defensive side of our game.

Just imagine a George Graham defence and an Arsene Wenger attack, It could be magical!