Jens Lehmann claims Arsenal paid the price for years for failing to replace their 'Invincibles' squad.
The Gunners romped to the Premier League title in 2004 without losing a game.
However, the North London club have not won the championship since and have struggled to qualify for the Champions League in recent years.
Lehmann believes the Gunners hierarchy did not add enough experience to their squad after selling some of their star names.
He told beIN SPORTS’ The Champions Club : “I think Arsenal made one mistake.
"At the time probably a minor mistake, but now I think it was quite a mistake which was decisive for the coming years.
"In 2008 Gilberto Silva and myself were the last guys from that team, and a year before they changed Thierry Henry, Patrick Viera, Martin Keown was leaving already in 2004, but within two years they got rid of all the personalities.
"I said Gilberto and myself we were the last ones and I was coming to the dressing room when I had my little comeback and there were guys like Robin Van Persie, Cesc Fabregas, Alex Hleb, Thomas Rosicky.
"All young guys and after one good game, they thought I’m on the top of the hierarchy, but you could feel that there was no hierarchy because they were too young to lead at the time.
"It wasn’t their fault but there was just no in between generation which could actually transfer the old values and the approaches to training and to games onto this new generation because there was a huge gap and in my opinion that was a transition that was too fast.
"They were looking at age and statistics and probably salaries and whatever, but keeping some of the good guys from before was a good sometimes nasty approach would have helped.”
