Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger cannot name any good tacklers in the Premiership.

"I don't see many," Wenger conceded, before offering Christian Lopez and Patrick Battiston, French international defenders from the Eighties, as possible examples.

Later he suggested former Arsenal pair Tony Adams and Martin Keown but his point had already been made.

In Wenger's mind, the art of the clean tackle is in serious decline, driven out of existence by the ugly and reckless lunge which now blights modern football.

"I like tackling because it is a fantastic technique but I am scared the good tackle goes out of the game," said Wenger. "The good tackle is beautiful to watch. You see the guy sliding in, playing the ball, focused on the ball. Then you see a guy tackling with two feet, one is at the level of the knee, the other is halfway over the ball and you say: bye-bye, go home, what are you doing on a football pitch?

"I don't really know what they want to do when they go in blindly. When you do a good tackle, you are completely relaxed because you master every movement and your target is to get the ball from your opponent without hurting him.

"In a good tackle, there is a desire to regain the ball, not only to clear the ball. Most tacklers nowadays, they kick the ball anywhere. Battiston and Lopez were great. They were professional tacklers. When they made the tackle, they had already seen the pass and they made the pass. You don't see that any more.

"There is a massive difference between that and jumping in like a mad guy, where you can destroy the legs of anybody. Players who are 90 kilos and who run the 100 metres in 11 seconds, if they jump in, they can completely destroy a player."