Defending is becoming a lost art – a problem that must be tackled

IF ever we needed proof that the art of defending is dead, then Liverpool and Manchester United provided it on Sunday.

Liverpool, in particular, given their status as the reigning Premier League, European and world champions.

And what worried me most about their performance was the fact Aston Villa didn’t even have to break their will to put seven goals past them.

Liverpool simply rolled over and waved Ollie Watkins and Co through.

Watching Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez against Villa, and United’s Harry Maguire and Eric Bailly before them against Tottenham, made me pine for the good old days.

Days when you could watch masters of the craft of defending, such as John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Jaap Stam, Steve Bruce, Gary Pallister, Alan Hansen and Mark ark Lawrenson at their peak. Sol Campbell, Tony Adams, Martin Keown, Steve Bould, Stuart Pearce… the list goes on.

They were all men who played football with the sole purpose of stopping opponents putting the ball in the back of their net.

I’m not saying Van Dijk (top left) is anything other than a grade A, world-class footballer, because we all know he is.

But what bothered me was s how little responsibility he or any of the other individuals in Liverpool and United shirts wanted to take.

Hansen and Lawrenson or Pallister and Bruce (above) would have soon worked out a team was getting the run on them and would have taken responsibility, dropping off for five or six minutes to force opponents to try to find a different way through.

These days, though, thou nothing ever seems to change — it’s as if players and managers are waiting until halftime for someone else to sort things out, or for the end of a game for an inquest.

Even managers seem to want to keep doing the same thing even when it’s not working because, ‘ That’s the way we play’.

Well, I’m sorry, but that shouldn’t be the case and I wish someone could tell me what has changed since 1996, when Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United capitulated in the title race by continuing to be gung-ho and everyone called him naive.

If me, Alan Shearer, Andy Cole, Dwight Yorke, Les Ferdinand, Ian Wright or any of the other top strikers who were around in my day had been playing against Liverpool on Sunday, we’d have walked off with three match balls. As for United, I saw Maguire (top right) need three bites of the cherry to head one ball away.

And remember what you were told as a kid when you conceded a free-kick in the under-11s about standing on the ball?

Well, here was the totem of English defenders giving Harry Kane five yards to thread a quick pass through for Heung-min Son to finish.

A lot of people tell me so many goals are being scored now because strikers are getting better and that the game is better for it, but I disagree.

Football is about balance – it’s about being the best attacking unit, midfield unit and defensive unit, and combining all of those attributes.

And until defenders learn to defend again, or are allowed to tackle properly again, then the art of defending may well be lost forever.