Arsenal legend Sol Campbell has put down his former club's consistent struggles in the Premier League to a lack of characters in the team.

The Gunners lost 3-1 to leaders Chelsea on Saturday effectively ending their title hopes for yet another season.

The former centre-back feels that the current Arsenal squad lacks leaders like Tony Adams, Martin Keown, David Seaman, Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp, which is the constant theme with their downfalls at this stage of the campaign each and every year.

"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," Campbell told Sky Sports.

"We didn't allow the whole 45 minutes to go by, we would address it on the pitch because if you wait for 45 minutes and you are in, you might be 2-0 down.

"And 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."