While it got a little hairy there for a couple of weeks, the best team in the Premier League is going to win the Premier League.
I called it in October, back when Manchester City and Liverpool were already six and seven points back, respectively. And my reasoning then is the same as why Arsenal — ultimately and finally — won their first Premier League title in 22 years:
This is one of the greatest defensive teams we’ve ever seen, and it’s probably the best set piece team we’ve ever seen, too.
Of course, “defense and set pieces” is typically the remit of overachieving lower-to-midtable clubs, isn’t it? Don’t you need to score lots of goals to win a 38-game-season title?
As the fantastic Arsenal blogger Scott Willis put it a couple of years ago: If you pair the greatest-ever Premier League defense with an average attack (based on goals scored and conceded), you’d get a plus-36 goal differential. Flip it around — best-ever attack, with an average defense — and you’d be looking at a plus-57 margin.
So while they might not produce the kind of risk-taking, goal-hungry soccer that’ll pull you out of your seat, Arsenal under manager Mikel Arteta have produced a new and unique version of title-winning excellence. It’s rare — especially since Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp shoved the modern version of the sport in a new direction — to see a team that’ has been as good as Arsenal have, in the way that Arsenal have.
Here are nine numbers that explain how — and why — it all worked.
– Inside Arsenal’s five-phase plan to win the Premier League
– Top 50 USMNT players, ranked by club form for World Cup
– Wherever Messi goes, pitch invaders (and arrests) follow
26 goals conceded
We’ll start here.
They still have one game to go, but Arsenal’s current mark of 26 goals conceded would be tied for the…
