Arsenal have gone from having David Louise and Mustafa at the back to Gabrielle and Celeba and the best defence in the Premier League this season. Arsenal have only conceded five goals since their win to break in early January. In the Premier League, they restrict their opponents to a small amount of low quality shots. They also have one of the strongest defences in the Champions League with the lowest XG on target and only conceding five goals that joined lowest in the competition. Welcome back to Offside Insights. I'm Monty and today I'm going to explain what makes Arsenal's defence so effective and the steps that the club has taken to transform this team and build one of the best defences in modern football. This Arsenal team is without doubt the best since the invincible. There is something different about them this year. Quality of chances they're facing the lowest figure in the Premier League. The fewer shots on target face-per-game. Every single situation in a game you can be sure that we can work it or works on it. We have to be dominant, we have to be aggressive. I think they are probably the best team defensively. Not just in this country, but maybe in Europe right now. We have to blame Dupont and Céritory as much as we want. But I want to prevent them attacking me as much as possible. The obvious question is, how is Mick Alartetta doing this with his team? Firstly, you obviously can't build a serious team without the investment to buy players and not have to sell. Arsenal have consistently been one of the richest clubs in Europe. And in the early 2000s, they decided to build the Emirates, which set the club up for long-term financial success. But they had to take on significant loans to fund it. First of all, we had to play with stadium back, had better governance from the banks, so we had to sell our best players. Arsenal had to be in profit for 16 seasons in a row while paying off these stadium debts. Until 2018, when Cronkey assumed 100% control of the club, he moved Arsenal's debts of £180m to his own company and gave the club much better repayment clauses. At the same time, the Premier League TV revenue was increasing dramatically with the last-place team in the Premier League earning the same as the third-best team in La Liga. This increase in finances has allowed Arsenal to go into the transfer market with some serious force, and their transfer payables has risen from £47m to £240m in just six years. But just spending money on players isn't enough to build a quality team. The first major signing that Arsenal made in 2019 was £72m wasted on Pepe. But later that year, Ateca was hired as first-team manager and Edu was brought in as a technical director. And since then, Arsenal have implemented an intelligent, data-driven recruitment strategy that has proven to be very successful. Edu, who is in charge of transfers, bought into Ateca's game model and vision of what it takes to compete at the top level. I will discuss this later, but it's all about dominating the opposition and playing the majority of the game in the final third. They then came up with an aligned recruitment strategy in which they decided to fire the majority of Arsenal's in-person scouts and instead focus on data-driven recruitment, using Arsenal's own football data analytics company, StapDNA. This graph here shows the age profile of the squad that they inherited. With the players age at the bottom and they might have minutes that they played on the left, you can clearly see that the players play in the most, the past their peak years with little resale value and hardly any room to grow. They started by focusing on signing defenders with the right statistical profile. They spent their head to be young so that the player could still develop but experience so there was enough data on them to make an informed decision. They also had to be athletic, physical and technical to suit Ateca's game model and then lastly versatile so they could play across multiple positions. In the first summer, they went with party and Gabrielle and then the next year, Ben White, OdeGarde, Ramstale and Tommy Asu. OdeGarde is the only attacker on that list and yet one of his best qualities is his ability to organise the press. Edu and Ateca spent more than two-thirds of their budget on defenders and it's clear that they've wanted to build this team from the back. He started by teaching the team to be solid in a low block and counterattack and it's what won them their FA Cup in his first season. Within two years, these new young signings started to get a lot of game time and then Edu and Ateca started focusing on getting rid of the aging players on high contracts. This was very controversial at the time as OdeGarde paid big sums of money to his star players to cancel their contracts. OdeGarde also went for a really bad run of form losing seven out of ten games. The older players were struggling to adapt to Ateca's game model and the new culture within the club. Many doubted the project with Ateca being one of the lowest rank managers in the league by fans. Arsenal had by far the youngest squad in the Premier League and were the arrivals of Hezuz and Zincenko from Man City in summer 2022. Things really started to change for the better. The age profile of the squad had changed drastically with now all of the main players within their peak years. Arsenal brought in young promising players that have been well-developed. It led to some difficult periods but they trusted in developing the youth with the goal that would eventually create one of the best teams in Europe. Arsenal now have the most valuable squad in football according to transfer market. That wouldn't have been possible without the 590 million pound spent on transfer as under Ateca but that investment had to be spent smartly and it couldn't have been done without Arsenal's aligned data-driven recruitment strategy. For me, it fundamentally comes down to the fact that Arsenal play the majority of their game in the opposition's final third and they hardly give them an opportunity in attacking areas. Arsenal's field tilt, which is a measure of how many passes a team makes in the final third, has risen all the way to 98 this season, meaning for every 98 passes Arsenal make in the final third, the opposition team only gets two. This graph I showed earlier shows how Ateca has transformed this team to dominate the opposition. More than control, he wants dominance in the right areas and not allowing the opposition to breathe. There are lots of benefits to having a high field tilt and territorial control in matches. Firstly, there's a direct link between teams that have a high field tilt and they might have points so they win in games. This is because it allows defenders to do most of their defending in the opposition's half and they're not as rely on on last-ditch tackles and defending the penalty area. It also means that the team concedes less corners, less penalties and less free kicks in dangerous positions. And lastly, it demoralises the opposition when you control the game and don't let them get into their rhythm. So how have Arsenal set up their team to exert so much territorial control? Firstly, Arsenal keep teams in their final third by stopping them playing through them with their incredible out of possession structure. This graph shows that Arsenal are the best team in the Premier League at stopping the opposition from passing through them with only 7% of passing sequences ending in a shot. It starts with a low 4-4-2 block where the wingers drop deep to protect the fullbacks. They then try to eliminate any central progression and force the ball backwards. Arsenal's mid block is also a 4-4-2 with a very high line and two aggressive pressing forwards. Once they push the ball backwards further, Declan-rye springs out of the pivot to make a 2-3 formation and then Arsenal employ their high intensity pressing style which is a measure of how many touches the opponent gets before they're tackled. Once they pin teams back, they're then incredibly effective at winning the ballback with 174 regains in the final third, the second most in the Premier League. It's also worth noting Arsenal's structure with the ball is very defence minded and players are positioned well to stop counter-tax like Celeban Gabbriel's aggressive rest defence positioning. Arsenal stopped teams from passing it out by pushing them back into their final third with aggressive and coordinated pressing. This means the team's only way out is with long boos that are less accurate and are often won by Arsenal's backline. Arsenal force their opponents to play 14.2% of their passes long. The second most in the division and only 45% of those passes are successful. The second lowest in the Premier League. This is because Arsenal's team are just filled with huge players that win their jewels. With seven of the first 11 being six foot one or higher, Arsenal's fullbacks are converted centrebacks and then have urts as just a freak being the tallest player in the team but also one of the most technical. Arsenal certainly effective at first forcing teams to go long with their aggressive pressing and then winning those aerial jewels and second balls. Arsenal's recruitment shifted this summer towards more marquee signings that could impact the first team and take their territorial dominance to another level. Yet again, Arsenal spent the majority of their summer budget on defensive minded signings but this time with players that were ready to enter straight into the first 11. Declan Rice has absolutely transformed the midfield and in huge amounts of tackles, interceptions and recoveries. His athleticism allows him to patrol large areas of the pitch which is vital for Arsenal's aggressive pressing. Rice has also been a revelation at the back with his aggressive style in position and claiming 15% of all crosses that enter the box. That immediately stops an opponent's attack and is a big part of Arsenal's dominance this season. He's also not too bad at saving shots and penalties. Havats is also developing well, having been traumatised at Chelsea. His positional flexibility adds a lot to the front line and he's a beast in the air. The Genoese is the fourth best player at defensive corners last season and with Timber coming back, the defence could be getting even stronger although his best attributes are his progressive ball dribbling. Since 2016, the team that has conceded the first amount of goals has gone on to win the title and Sir Alex Ferguson was certainly right. They're attacking into games but your defence wins you titles. Arsenal have certainly built a serious defence with a young squad and a young manager but now the serious test comes. Right, the business end of the season Arsenal got a huge game away at City and then at home to buy Munich and that's when the real test of this team will come. We'll see if they can live up to the title of Best Defence in Europe. Arsenal in Chelsea!