Richard Williamson how Arsenal's reliance on their goalscoring prowess will be tested by leaders Chelsea

ARSENE WENGER was in a cheerful mood yesterday, seemingly recovered from the irritable outburst of last Saturday night, in the aftermath of a damaging defeat at Sunderland, and the four-letter explosion of Monday morning, when someone asked him about Theo Walcott’s World Cup prospects. In the preparation for tomorrow’s home match against Chelsea the restoration of his equilibrium was probably vital.

But if William Gallas cannot manage to squeeze a contact lens into his painfully swollen right eye, Wenger’s Arsenal will have only half of his first-choice back four available for the contest with Didier Drogba, Nicolas Anelka and their colleagues. That will hardly put them in the best position to improve a defensive record that, in terms of statistics and recent history, appears to disqualify them from winning the Premier League this season.

The manager disagrees. It is possible, he claimed yesterday, for his team to go on and recapture the title they last won six seasons ago while continuing to leak goals at their present rate. That would make them the first club since Manchester United in 1999-2000 to take the title while conceding at the rate of a goal a match, and would represent a remarkable victory for an evolving philosophy in which Wenger seems far more interested in scoring goals than preventing them.

Arsenal have given away 15 goals in 12 league matches this season, their most profligate start since Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea established new standards of parsimony five years ago, when the west London team let in only 15 goals in an entire campaign. Under Carlo Ancelotti, Chelsea travel to the Emirates Stadium tomorrow leading the league and having conceded only eight goals in 13 matches.

For Wenger, in contrast to some of his predecessors at the club, the goals-against total is currently less important than the figure in the preceding column, which shows that they have scored 36 times, a gluttonous three per game.

But some observers are disturbed by the apparent change in Arsenal’s mentality and by the reflection in the statistics of what they see as an increasingly loose approach to the job of defending.

“I believe first of all we can improve that record over the rest of the season,” Wenger said yesterday.

“And I also believe that as long as we score three or four in each game, it doesn’t matter too much. But of course, as we have seen at Sunderland, when you don’t score, you’re vulnerable. It’s quite amazing because, if you look at the number of shots against us from the beginning of the season, it’s very minimal. We conceded those goals from only 36 shots against us. Sunderland had one shot on target.”

When Wenger arrived at Arsenal in 1996, the most impressive element of the structure he inherited was not Highbury’s marble entrance hall but the great back four. On those foundations the Frenchman was able to construct the double-winning side of 1997-’98, before supervising a gradual evolution that led to a second double in 2001-’02 and to a third Premier League title with the “invincibles” of 2003-’04.

Now we are seeing the kind of football he may have had in mind all along, a more fluid style that forms a much greater contrast with the rigorous approach of his immediate predecessors, George Graham in particular. Even in Tuesday’s 2-0 Champions League home win over Standard Liege, the Belgian team were allowed to pepper the Arsenal goal and felt unlucky to leave without a point.

“Arsenal are playing attacking football and they don’t sit back and defend,” Nigel Winterburn, the left-back in the defensive quartet Wenger inherited from Graham, said yesterday.

“They’re always going to be conceding more goals than Chelsea or Manchester United because they’re more open in the way they play.

“That’s been Arsene’s policy since he’s been at the club but in the last few seasons even more so. When he arrived, he played with wingers – Marc Overmars on one side and Freddie Ljungberg on the other. This team now has a lot more flexibility.

“They try to play it out from the back at all times and when you do that you’re always at risk when it breaks down.”

Impatient fans have blamed Wenger’s inability or unwillingness to acquire a goalkeeper more secure than Manuel Almunia, his first choice, or Vito Mannone, the understudy; the lack of height in the centre of defence, where neither Gallas nor the newcomer Thomas Vermaelen measures 6ft; and the unconvincing performance of Alexandre Song, the latest candidate – following the discarded Gilberto Silva, Mathieu Flamini and Lassana Diarra – to plug the midfield gap left by the departures of Emmanuel Petit and Patrick Vieira. Now he has also been struck by long-term injuries to his first- and second-choice left-backs, Gael Clichy and Kieran Gibbs.

Both Winterburn and Paul Davis, a former team-mate and club captain, point to the shift of emphasis in Song’s role. Under Graham, Davis said, he and a fellow central midfielder would be instructed to protect the centre-backs and not to venture upfield. He remembered being told by Graham that as a result he and the other midfield players would burn out at 30, whereas the back four would be able to go until they were in their 40s. “That’s just about how it worked out,” he said.

“Now that a lot of tackling has gone out of the game, shielding the defence is crucial,” Winterburn said. “

“When you talk about a protective player, you need more than one or the whole thing falls apart. You can have the best back four in the world but, if they don’t have the right protection in front of them, they’ll let in goals. And vice versa: when you’re keeping clean sheets, the defenders get the praise – but you have to look at what’s going on in front of them.”

Under Wenger, Petit and Vieira each enjoyed the licence to go forward as long as the other stayed back. The 22-year-old Song, awarded a contract extension this week after being picked in all but two league matches this season, appears to enjoy much greater freedom, as well as Wenger’s faith.

“Arsene is getting more adventurous,” Davis said.

“Last week Song went on a run, played a one-two and ended up in the Sunderland penalty area, which is very unusual for a holding midfield player. When that sort of thing happens, gaps will be created.”

The defence, he added, must be causing Wenger more concern than he is willing to admit. “Vermaelen has done well in his first season and, although he’s not tall, he’s got a good spring, but heading isn’t Gallas’s forte, the full-backs aren’t the tallest and opponents will target them in the air. There’s definitely a weakness there – and there are going to be games where you need to win 1-0 and go away with three points.”

Sunderland, he added, was one of those games. And tomorrow may be another.

Guardian Service