Arsenal have the best back line in the country – but does defence still win titles?

Mikel Arteta was Arsene Wenger’s captain and Pep Guardiola’s assistant. In the managerial family tree, he has no links to Sir Alex Ferguson. And yet part of his ethos appears to have been borrowed from the great Scot. “Attack wins you games, defence wins you titles,” was one of Ferguson’s maxims; his attacks and wins could loom larger in the imagination.

Arsenal’s season could be an extended experiment in the second half of Ferguson’s theory. It looks ever likelier Arteta’s side will end the campaign with the finest defence: in some measures, far and away the best. Defence could win David Raya a Golden Glove and the Gunners records, but perhaps only a second consecutive finish as runners-up. And yet, if there are times this season when it has seemed Liverpool have appeared intent on rebuffing Ferguson’s truism – forever conceding first and looking to their attack to win both games and then titles – Arsenal are taking a more parsimonious path.

When the final whistle blew at Molineux on Saturday, it was with a historic first. No previous Arsenal team, not even with George Graham’s famously frugal back four, had kept six consecutive clean sheets away from home in the league. Arteta has spent 20 years in England and marvelled at the feat. “It is very difficult,” he said. “I don’t know when it was last done. I imagine not recently because it’s extremely difficult to do that.” Only Chelsea in 2008 and Manchester United in 2009 have mustered longer runs of clean sheets on their travels in the Premier League; Arsenal could equal each if they can make it a magnificent seventh on their shortest journey, to Tottenham, on Sunday.

And if Graham, an elegant midfielder as a player, became a manager who rigorously drilled a defence, the same may be said of Arteta, stylist turned pragmatist. There is an argument that defence cost Arsenal the title last season: they conceded 10 more than City – and Newcastle – then. They let in 11 in four April games then. Now the defeat to Aston Villa has been surrounded by shutouts. Arsenal have conceded in Portugal and Germany more recently than anywhere other the Emirates Stadium in England.

Wolves manager Gary O’Neil described Arsenal’s as the best defence in the world. “If you look at the stats, you see how good they defend,” he said. Those numbers are still better on the road. This is the second consecutive year when Arsenal’s defensive record has been better away from the Emirates, but it has improved to a remarkable level.

Their expected goals against away from home is just 11.77. City possess the next best tally of 17.44, with no one else under 22; in effect, Arsenal have been 50 percent better than the reigning champions, twice as good as anyone else. They have now gone 541 minutes without conceding. In what should be the tougher half of fixtures, they have been at their most resilient.

Home and away, they have allowed just 74 shots on target, compared to 136 in the whole of last season. There is a formidable unit, even with Jakub Kiwior, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Oleksandr Zinchenko sharing left-back duties and a theory that Jurrien Timber will be the preferred choice when fit: Ben White, William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes are cornerstones, however, with Declan Rice affording high-grade protection and, after a shaky start, David Raya established in goal.

There is a pride in clean sheets, Arteta feels. “Credit to the boys for the level of organisation, for the understanding and the love that they show defending and the platform that it gives to the team to win football matches,” he said. It could have been a platform for progress; instead Arsenal may have a different sort of stability if they end up second again.

In the Champions League, there is the question if Arsenal have veered too far in the other direction; if they have got the balance right in England, they may have been too cautious in the Champions League. Perhaps that could be attributed to the nervous of newcomers, but they only scored three goals in 420 minutes of knockout football. Each of the other quarter-finalists scored at least six over their four games in the last 16 and last eight. But Arsenal exited Europe having only conceded seven goals in 10 games. Rewind a few years and Wenger’s side could let in 10 in two matches against Bayern Munich alone.

But in the Premier League, one possible scenario is that they do the bittersweet Tottenham double. In 2016-17, Mauricio Pochettino’s team registered both the most goals for and the fewest against, but without becoming champions. Neither attack nor defence won them the title. The risk is that Arsenal emulate that odd achievement.