Clichy: What we can learn from the big sides

Gaël Clichy believes Arsenal must look at the success of the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea, Inter Milan and Barcelona and learn from the defensive displays of these sides.

Arsenal were knocked off the top of the Premier League table after a 1-0 defeat at the hands of Manchester United on Monday, and Clichy believes that the stronger defence of Alex Ferguson's team made the small difference.

The French full-back would not want the Gunners to sacrifice their attacking instincts in order to tighten up at the back, but insists it is possible to do both, using Barcelona as the bext example.

He said: "Maybe we should be inspired [by United] because that was, from start to finish, a real unit.

"I don't say that we should look to do exactly the same, because our game is different, but we saw Inter Milan win the Champions League playing similarly and you can see that, for all their good football, Barcelona's players all work solidly together in defence too.

"It can happen once or twice that your defence is exposed but it shouldn't be every time, and that's one point we can improve on.

"Once again, I'm not saying teams like United and Chelsea are stronger or better than us. We know we have amazing players in all positions and we have to keep playing our football – but we must be more compact, home and away."

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