Over my morning coffee in Slovenia, I ended up down a little bit of a twitter rabbit hole involving Spurs fans and William Saliba.

Following the Frenchman’s comments that he sees himself as one of the best 3 central defenders in the Premier League, the replies were full of our cousins up the road claiming he would not get into their back two.

The responses from Arsenal fans were easy to predict – Tottenham conceded twice as many goals as Arsenal so clearly he would get in. And this is where it took a turn.

“But Mikel lines up ultra defensive with four centre backs and two defensive midfielders. If he played the attacking football Ange does, Saliba would be exposed”.

It was a comment that had me spitting out my breakfast (not sure what pastry it was but it was lovely).

Last season we scored 91 league goals. The lost on our history. Meanwhile Spurs scored 74. This kind of fact blows out the view that Spurs play more attacking football than us.

We also conceded just 29 goals last season, against Tottenham’s 61.

This highlights Arteta has a fantastic balance between attack and defence – we score loads and don’t concede, whilst Ange is happy to sacrifice clean sheets in the quest of goals, but that quest is rarely a successful one.

I will leave the deep tactical analysis to others, but with the pace of Saliba and Gabriel, combined with David Raya’s starting position, we defend the half way line. Add in that defensive shield in midfield and we are often looking to win the ball back in the opponents half.

That means teams struggle to transition to get the ball to the edge of our box, let alone get into a clear goal scoring position.

It also means when we win the ball back, we rarely have the full length of the pitch to go when attacking – a big reason why we are scoring more goals.

The criticism of Spurs fans about Arteta’s “defensive” tactics is laughable, considering just how many goals we score under him.

It really is baffling that scoring loads, conceding not many, and having a team that works hard to win the ball back is now a source of criticism.

Maybe if they had a manager who could make his team well organised in defence and attack they wouldn’t have won just 2 of the last 7 games in 2023/24.

We will continue to add to our squad this summer, recruiting both defensive and attacking players as Arteta looks to maintain the balance.

And for those wondering, I actually think Saliba is the best defender in the league.

Keenos