make, and not have doubts, can he? It's not a case that we've been desperately unlucky to come up against teams who have, on the day we've played them, turned in scintillatingly good performances. We've lost points through a self-inflicted combination of ill-discipline, spurned chances and, let's face it, abysmal defending. And that abysmal defending continues not to be a problem simply of the back four. How often do we speak about it being a team effort yet Sp*rs second on Sunday was preventable, through nothing more than simple concentration. If we were more detatched from this situation, watching a team whose current league run is as poor as Arsenal's, and whose manager seems unable to correct the basics, we'd probably suggest in that footballing way that 'he's lost the dressing room'. The fact is players don't get to this level of football without being able to do the basics. If Arsene can't get that much out of them, at a time when it should be the very least we can expect, it's very worrying. People will talk of a lack of confidence, and that's clearly an issue too, but you don't need to be confident to track a man running through your midfield, you don't need to be confident to close a guy down when he's about to shoot, and you really don't need to be confident to hump the ball 50 yards to a 6'7 defender trying his hand as a striker in the last 10 minutes of