Frank Lampard delivers brutal assessment of Arsenal's defensive problems

London, March 18: Former Chelsea legend Frank Lampard has highlighted that Arsene Wenger's incompetent to land a top-class defender over two transfer windows and some of his player's low-key mentality issues has brought down Arsenal this term.

Arsenal for the first time under Wenger's reign, last year finished a without achieving a Champions League spot. However, his team responded in the very last game with a win over arch-rivals Chelsea to win Arsenal's 13th FA Cup.

Wenger also started the season well enough with some bright results and from the transfer market bought some high profile signings like Sead Kolasinac and Alexandre Lacazette.

However, eventually their fortunes did not turn up and they crashed out of the FA Cup to Nottingham Forest, were thrashed by Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final, and currently sit sixth in the Premier League.

In the winter window, Wenger again broke the bank to Land Arsenal's highest ever signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and landed another big name Henrikh Mkhitaryan in a swap deal with Alexis Sanchez to turn the ship.

But dropping costly points in the league against the likes of Bournemouth, Swansea City and Brighton now have put a big over Arsenal's top four hope.

However, the club are on a current run of three straight wins in all competitions and sealed a 5-1 aggregate win in their Europa League last 16 tie. But despite all these the North London side still, do not look settle in the back.

Arsenal only have won just three away games all season and also have conceded the most number of goals in the top six.

The defensive unit consists of Koscielny, Mustafi and Holding looked vulnerable and now while addressing Arsenal's problem, Lampard now has stated that the problem is down to a lack of leaders and quality from the back which is bringing down the tempo of Arsenal.

"I think there’s a mentality issue," he told BT Sport. "Sometimes a bad performance doesn’t get addressed and it leads to another bad performance and I think individually they’re too sensitive, they're not good enough.

"They haven’t recruited to get top-end defenders, a leader, a strong man at the back, who can defend well enough because they’ve shown in that bad run they’ve been on they’ve made mistake after mistake after a mistake, sometimes you have to look at individuals."

The Gunners will again fight for their road to top four after the International break against Stoke City in April 1st which looks slim as they are already 13 points behind fourth-placed Spurs.

However, after reaching the last eight of Europa league where they fill face CSKA Moscow in the next round, Arsenal will surely now turn up their attention towards the European competition to make sure of their Champions League inclusion just like Manchester United did last season by beating Ajax in the final.