Arsenal hero Winterburn questions senior leadership inside locker room

Arsenal hero Nigel Winterburn has questioned the leadership inside the current Gunners' dressing room.

In his column for the London Evening Standard, Winterburn wrote: "When (George) Graham left the club, Arsene Wenger inherited a squad that contained winners: Tony Adams, Lee Dixon, Steve Bould and David Seaman had all been successful and knew what it meant to play at Highbury and represent the club.

"Arsene brought in Patrick Vieira, Emmanuel Petit and Marc Overmars and they quickly realised what the club meant. There was a natural crossover, something that I remember Thierry Henry clearly recognised.

"His departure has left the current squad without anyone to turn to and, for me, the balance is not quite right.

"Incredibly, of the team that started the 2005 FA Cup Final — which was the last trophy the Gunners won — only Cesc Fabregas is set to feature against Liverpool tonight. This lack of experience is glaring and even Wenger has talked about the naivety that some of his squad have shown this season.

"Right now they need a leader to tell them 'this is Arsenal'."

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Comments (2)

Well well well Anoymous u hav abig point mi brother ilove the way u wrote.my point of view is abt selling players he grooms up ie flamini now if flamini was there where do u think the gunners mid fld will be up 2now? Now we luck strickers wish ths man had not sold Adebayo what do u think was going to be the next step?another thing if i look at manchester utd's goal keepers 1 is Van der sar for us we hav Almunia yes but how can Fabianski be our second choice keeper for a big club like arsenal?

Basically, this is a team with no institutional culture and has to be re-built from the ground up now. Nice work, Wenger. Did you notice how Alex Ferguson has won with kids? He keep senior star players in the squad who lead those kids and teach them the culture of success and the culture of the club, the pride of the organization, and what a winning MENTALITY means. Those senior players are treated with admiration and respect, did you notice the case of Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes or are you too daft to understand they serve more for the team than only their role on the pitch during the game??? Wenger had sophisticated ideas about football and was an influential manager back in the 1990s, but everyone knows all his methods now and he ran out of new ideas six years ago, furthermore the blind spots in his mangement philosophy are beyond huge, as if he is going blind cerebrally, like his brain is being eaten away by Mad Cow disease, maybe someone should do a scan? It is hard to imagine but Wenger's legacy could be remembered as LUCK, he was lucky to get big buys of Henry/Vieira when he moved to Arsenal, plus have a strong squad already there, then when that generation of players was gone Wenger apparently cannot even coach a competent defense such as the likes of Fulham have...... Arsenal defense is a total laughable joke, apparently it was up to Lehmann to coach the defense in the past, but Wenger was not smart enough to bring in another goalkeeper who can do his job of coaching the defense for him, instead he has Almunia and two youngsters, i.e. three goalkeepers who are not up to the task of even performing their own job let alone teaching defenders how to do theirs. Too bad, but it's all over now, who will teach the young lads what it means to be an Arsenal player now, what it means to have the pride of the club? You are starting over from square one, good luck you ruined the tradition of Arsenal FC. At the end of the day was it all worth it to sell out to a French man who care nothing for the tradition of the club, yes he win big in the short term, but now the tradition and culture of the club is squandered, all you have is young players with a loser mentality and know idea what Arsenal means, they only come to the club to "learn from Wenger", Arsenal is nothing to them and the club has no culture or pride of it's own. End of the line, you have sunk below Tottenham in that, which for everything else at least still has it's own pride.