Arsenal have led the Premier League\u2019s meanest defence in each of the last two seasons, yet that superiority has not been enough to secure the title. The club is still searching for a first Premier League crown since the 2003\u201304 Invincibles campaign, a drought now extending beyond two decades and noted as the longest since their post-1919 promotion era.<\/p>\n
After eight games of the 2025\u201326 season Arsenal sit top of the table. They have won six fixtures and dropped five points from the 24 available so far. What stands out is the goals-against column. Manchester City (17) and Chelsea (16) have marginally outscored Arsenal (15), while Liverpool, Bournemouth and Tottenham Hotspur have netted just once less often. More telling is how rarely Arsenal have been scored against.<\/p>\n
The Gunners\u2019 backline has been breached only three times in the league to date, an average of 0.375 goals conceded per game. That figure is lower than two landmark English defensive records. Highlighted by The Times, Liverpool\u2019s fewest-goals-conceded season (16 in 42 games, 1978\u201379) works out at 0.381 per game, while Chelsea\u2019s Premier League-era record of 15 goals conceded in 38 games in 2004\u201305 averages 0.395.<\/p>\n
Arsenal still face 30 Premier League fixtures this season, so both defensive standards remain under threat over the long run. Mikel Arteta has tended to select a preferred defensive quartet of Jurri\u00ebn Timber, William Saliba, Gabriel and Riccardo Calafiori, but that combination has not been available in every match. The depth of the defensive unit is evident: replacements such as Myles Lewis-Skelly and Cristhian Mosquera have been able to slot in without a visible drop in defensive performance.<\/p>\n
The early figures position Arsenal as a team capable of challenging historic benchmarks, but maintaining this level across a full season will determine whether those records can be genuinely threatened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arsenal have conceded three goals in eight Premier League games, and are chasing defensive records.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3981,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,192],"tags":[1162,1100],"class_list":["post-3982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics-stats","category-arsenal","tag-analytics","tag-defence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}