Can Arsenal's defence lead them to title glory?

Arsenal have kept five clean sheets in eight Premier League games this season

After having the best defence, but scoring 17 fewer goals than champions Liverpool last season, it seemed obvious Arsenal would have to improve their attack if they were to have a better opportunity of winning the Premier League this time around.

But in conceding just three times in the opening eight games this term - giving them a three-point lead in top spot - their already-impressive defence has improved to such a historic level they may not need to score many more goals after all.

And it's a good thing too because, while the Gunners' attack is slightly better than last season, it's still a far cry from their title challenge in 2023-24 when they averaged 2.4 goals per game.

With Martin Odegaard, Noni Madueke, Gabriel Jesus and Kai Havertz among the creative players currently sidelined with injuries, Arsenal's attack may well improve as the season goes on.

But if it doesn't, will their defence be enough to lift the top-flight trophy for the first time since 2004?

Of the 33 sides to win the Premier League, only six have won it conceding the fewest goals and not scoring the most (18%).

The last team to succeed in such fashion was Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool in 2019-20, who ended their 30-year title wait despite scoring 17 goals fewer than Manchester City's 102 that season.

But Arsenal have had the best defence in the last two seasons and still finished second, so what's potentially different this time around?

While it's still early days, we're not just looking at them having the best defence this season but one of the best in any Premier League campaign.

Their current rate of conceding just 0.38 goals per game means if they were to maintain that for the whole season, they would let in just 14 and break the incredible record of 15 set by Jose Mourinho's title-winning Chelsea side in 2004-05.

In fact, at their current rate of scoring 1.88 goals per game, Mikel Arteta's men are on course to almost exactly mirror that remarkable team, potentially scoring 71 times and conceding 14, compared to Chelsea's tally of 72 and 15.

That would mean Arsenal scoring two more than the 69 last season, but conceding an incredible 20 goals fewer than the 34 last time out.

Since Premier League winners on average have scored 84 goals and conceded 32 in a 38-game season, their current form would make them one of the more immovable, rather than unstoppable, champions in history.

However, as mightily impressive as Arsenal have been, matching that incredible defence of Chelsea 20 years ago will be a task of Herculean proportions.

To start with, they need to keep clean sheets in their next three games against Crystal Palace, Burnley and Sunderland simply to match the three goals Chelsea had conceded after 11 games.

Not only that, but a big reason why Mourinho's men let in just 15 that season was because, after conceding twice in a 2-2 draw at Arsenal on 12 December 2004, they didn't let in another one in the league until 5th March, 2005, during a 3-1 win at Norwich.

That meant Chelsea had conceded just eight times in 27 games.

That run of 10 successive league clean sheets set a record at the time, but was later broken by Manchester United's run of 14 in 2008-09.

Between 31 January and 31 March, 1998, Arsenal went eight games without conceding on their way to lifting their first Premier League title under Arsene Wenger.

Arteta's side will likely need to match - or even beat - that run at some point if they are to rely primarily on their defence in leading them to triumph in May.