Sims wrote:What about the invincibles season where there were 0 old guard defenders or in the run to the CL final which had a record breaking defence which contained Flamini at LB, Senderos & Kolo toure?
Sol Campbell spent several years under George Graham at Tottenham first of all, so he was essentially a George Graham player who could pass on his expertise to those around him just as Tony Adams used to do. Plus, as others have said, Vieira and co. learned much of their trade around the old guard, so they could pass on what they learnt to the newer players, and Keown was still in the squad at least during The Invincible's.
On top of this we used to play counter attacking football back when we used to win titles, meaning we could normally defend in numbers and focus on our positioning, instead of getting horribly exposed like we do now. Plus we could take advantage of the space the opposition left behind with some of the quickest players the league has ever seen, like Thierry Henry. Now we have Giroud up front, who has the speed of a slug.
So Wenger abandoned the tactics that made him successful in order to become a poor man's Barcelona, and has never looked back to what made him successful in the first place. Let's not forget that Leicester won the league last season playing counter attacking football with a set up very much like the one we used to have (Vardy instead of Henry, Huth and Morgan instead of Adams and Keown, etc etc).