See, I agree with a lot of what you say there. We obviously are at least watching the same game of football and seeing more or less the same things, so that's something. I guess the difference, for me, is that it only takes a few weeks on the training ground for at least some of these things to be improved upon. Wenger must have seen Koscielny go diving into tackles as often as we have this season too, come charging out and leaving the defence exposed. He must have seen our players 'forget' to track their man from corners over and over again.
And these, for example, are things that I know, from the books I've read, are things that George Graham was razor sharp on in training, that he drilled his boys in week, after week after week. It's part of what made them great individuals, and a great unit. But it's not just Adams and Bould, not just Vidic and Ferdinand that don't make these mistakes - I look at our players, and I see, in most cases, sensational athletes (even stringbean Koscielny), and also fairly intelligent people. I know giving a good interview is not exactly the same as footballing intelligence, but I find it hard to believe that this lot simply cannot be taught to improve on some fairly fundamental errors, when around us in the league I see 'lesser' players get it right more often than ours do.
Ultimately, I believe that the likes of Thomas Vermaelen, Johann Djourou, Laurent Koscielny, Bacary Sagna, Alex Song, etc are capable, with better preparation, of delivering much better results than they have. I believe, absolutely, that they have the ability to be competitive with the top teams, not looking to the likes of Fulham as a benchmark for defensive prowess. I don't believe that they're just flat-out inferior. None of them are perfect, by any stretch of the imagination - but they could be a whole lot better than they are.
