Arsenal have world's best defense and Gunners boss Mikel Arteta warns rivals it's 'getting better'

LONDON -- If you want to understand what makes Arsenal by far the best out-of-possession team on the planet, you could start with the small details. It's four players lined up at the edge of the box for the corners that are Arsenal's greatest weapon. They're not there to work a short corner but to make sure that if Crystal Palace try to counter, it's snuffed out at source.

It's Gabriel Magalhaes blocking two more shots, the rock on whom Arsenal have built their backline, utterly immovable, no matter how hard Jean-Philippe Mateta tried to give him a shove. It's Myles Lewis-Skelly just letting his left arm float in the direction of Christantus Uche as Palace tried to charge up the right. You wouldn't often see a Premier League referee give a foul for it, but in bending the laws of the game just a few degrees, Arsenal's defender quelled what might have been a dangerous attack.

It's Piero Hincapie, minutes into his Premier League debut, sliding towards the touchline, perhaps in the knowledge that he is not going to keep the ball from going out of play, but he was going to get it back in. Oliver Glasner had lobbed the ball to Adam Wharton to take a throw-in quickly. Thomas Bramall could not allow that. Hincapie had given his teammates time to organize.

If you think that was a fluke incident, well, you might be right. Where Hincapie led, though, the Emirates Stadium followed. A few moments later, Jefferson Lerma was limbering up to launch in one of those long throws that are so à la mode in the 2025-26 Premier League. From somewhere in the bowels of the West Stand, a matchball came flying onto the pitch. Oliver Glasner's defeated grin said it all. Mikel Arteta had got what he was wishing for on Friday. North London had been "play[ing] the game with us."

Not that the 11 on the pitch needed the help. They were just as up for the fight. Arteta reeled off examples. "Ricky [Calafiori] goes on the floor and puts a tackle, Jurrien [Timber] the same, the way Viktor [Gyokeres] was chasing every second ball. So some individual actions on the ball as well, I think we are getting better again and the crowd is playing the game with us and it makes such a difference," he said. 

It should be a terrifying thought for strikers across Europe that this defense is getting better, all the more so given that Arteta isn't exaggerating. When they are this good without the ball, they can afford to be off color with it. Arsenal's possession game might have been a bit slower and lighter on guile that it can be at its best, but it left vanishingly few lanes for Palace, perhaps the Premier League's most dangerous counter-attacking unit, to burst into. From the moment Eberechi Eze turned the knockdown from a free kick into a glorious kung fu volley, Arsenal locked in.

For half an hour, Palace couldn't even get a shot away on the Gunners' goal. More than that, they did not even reach the Arsenal penalty area. That opening in the 69th minute resulted in the visitors' sole shot on target of the game, a flicked header from Eddie Nketiah that would require a snickometer and slow-motion cameras to confirm for certain that he did reach the ball before David Raya's gloves were grasping it. Still, it was the first save an Arsenal goalkeeper had had to make in five hours, nine minutes of Premier League football.

The best generators of expected goals in this season's top flight were locked out of the danger zone, held to less than half an xG. In that regard, they were no different to more than half of Arsenal's Premier League opponents this season. The only teams to clear that mark? Liverpool (0.52), Newcastle (0.61), Manchester City (0.91) and Manchester United in that out-of-character opener (1.52). 

So far this season, Palace have proven themselves to be a team who at least merit a place in the conversation alongside those Champions League chasers. And they got zilch for nearly half this game without actually doing much wrong. "In the second half, there were two or three times we found Ismaila Sarr in the pocket and Declan Rice recovered and stole the ball," said Glasner. 

His team made "two mistakes" to give Eze "a free shot inside the box." They know better than most the value of that. Unfortunately for Palace, Arsenal didn't really make one.

William Saliba, who picked up an injury in the first half, was having his difficulties with Mateta. No matter, Cristhian Mosquera stepped in the sort of exemplary fashion that is becoming customary where the youngster is concerned. Hincapie's first eight minutes of Premier League football and the added time were blemishless. The sort of injuries that crop up at the end of a draining eight-day run should have rocked Arsenal today. They lost Saliba, Rice and Calafiori to knocks, Gabriel Martinelli seemed to injure his groin and Bukayo Saka could only last a tough 66 minutes after a bout of injury. Nothing set them off course.

No wonder Arteta termed this a win he valued more "than any other victory this season."

"We knew the difficulty of it," he added. "You come after playing every three days, you have a big opportunity as well with the things that happened during this weekend and we play against a team that in my opinion has been one of the best recently in terms of organization. How difficult they made it, how frustrated they can make you and the moment that you lose that concentration, they will punish you for sure. We have managed to be very stable, playing the game that we have to play."

In the directors' box, George Graham could only have been loving what he saw. This was the glory days of "1-0 to the Arsenal" all over again, a backline worthy of comparison with Tony Adams et al, the defense that embedded itself in footballing folklore in the 1990s. That is the standard that this team should hold themselves to. That they are the best defense on the planet is blindingly obvious. Continue on this trajectory and it would take something remarkable for the trailing pack to stop them from ranking alongside the greatest backlines on which a title triumph has been built.