Sol Campbell believes his former club suffer from a lack of leadership on the pitch.
Arsene Wenger has come under further scrutiny from sections of the Arsenal faithful after their hopes of winning their first Premier League title in 13 years have all but ended following back-to-back defeats to Watford and Chelsea last week.
But while Campbell believes Wenger does not suffer from a lack of belief in his players and his own ability, the ex-Arsenal centre-back reckons the problem lies within the blend of personalities in the current squad.
Speaking to Premier League Daily, Campbell said:
“I don’t know what’s happening now, but when I was there we used to police it ourselves. We had the characters to police it ourselves.
“we had the characters you know would say something, Patrick would say something, Tony, Martin Keown, David Seaman, all these guys, from the front Thierry, Dennis Bergkamp, all these guys would chip in on the pitch while the game was going on. That’s the key, you’ve got to have those characters on the pitch.
“The guys who will say something on the pitch, you don’t need one, you need almost four or five saying their stuff if things are not going right.”
Campbell has hit the nail on the head here, but this is only a small part of why Arsenal are failing to deliver in the Premier League. Yes, there are no clear leaders on the pitch but there are several other reasons why we continue to bottle it every season and this is down to the mentality of the players and the lack of motivation by Wenger himself. For some reason, we seem to lose our bottle against the big teams in the league, or when it’s time to deliver. I don’t know why, but it’s something that certainly needs to be addressed, and quickly. Our team 10-15 years ago would not have stood for such poor performances that we’ve seen this season and would do something about it. But back then, like Campbell referred too, we had characters, this current side seem to lack this in abundance.
As for Wenger, I don’t see him as a motivator of players anymore. He’s become more of a business man rather than a manager to me as they years have gone by. If he doesn’t fire the players up before, during or after the game, then why should the players be up for the match? With that being said, like Campbell stated, there is no one in that dressing room with a voice, and that’s worrying moving forward as a club.
