Arsenal backs to the future

THEY used to sing ‘one-nil to the Arsenal’ in the days when beautiful football hadn’t yet arrived at Highbury, but for all Thierry Henry’s goals and Robert Pires’ flicks, it is defensive quality that is guiding the club to glory again.

Last night, Arsene Wenger’s team took one step towards the Champions League Final with a scoreline that had familiar echoes for anyone who has followed the club for longer than the 10 years of the Frenchman’s tenure.

The football was nothing like the high-energy, long-ball, up-and-at-them stuff from the good old days of muddy pitches, packed terraces and tight-fitting shorts. But Wenger may well reflect that his biggest achievement as a manager was embodied in the way his defence performed.

It wasn’t just that a defender, Kolo Toure, scored the important goal. Arsenal also recorded their ninth clean sheet in a row in the Champions League and rarely looked troubled.

They say the true test of a manager is his ability to oversee the transition of a team, to build one great side and then reinvent it before it becomes stale and weary. And the way Wenger has restored Arsenal’s defensive stability proves he really is up there with the very best.

There were many who thought he would never be able to replace the famous Arsenal back four who guided the club to so many trophies in a remarkable era that spanned from 1988 to 2002.

Led by Tony Adams, the unit of Steve Bould or Martin Keown, Lee Dixon and Nigel Winterburn - with David Seaman behind them - was so successful that it won four league titles, three FA Cups, a League Cup and a Cup Winners’ Cup.

Wenger proved his managerial qualities by adjusting his principles to keep the quartet together, adding their typically English qualities to his more continental style of play. But, as one by one his defensive stalwarts retired, the challenge was to replace them.

It took time, not least because Wenger stuck so rigidly to his belief in buying and educating young players rather than spending big on ready-made replacements.

He did, of course, invest in the wages of Sol Campbell, but injury has robbed him of the former Tottenham man so often in the last two years that many critics felt he had badly miscalculated the need for an experienced big signing to take his place.

Last season, with Pascal Cygan wobbly at centre-half and Philippe Senderos still learning, it was defensive frailties that cost Arsenal the title. But since then things have slowly taken shape.

Injuries to Campbell, Lauren and Ashley Cole forced Wenger into a complete rethink, requiring him to put far more faith in youth than even he would advocate. But the results have been remarkable.

The athletic Senderos, 21, has grown in stature with the faith placed in him; Toure, a veteran at 25, has become immense alongside him; Emmanuel Eboue, 22 and signed for just £1 million (€1.45m) from Belgian club Beveren, has been a rampaging revelation at right-back. And Mathieu Flamini, an unconvincing presence in midfield earlier in the campaign, has done a quite remarkable job at left-back at the age of 22.

Add to the that the form of goalkeeper Jens Lehmann, who was ridiculed and lambasted last season but has justified Wenger’s faith in bounds since then, and Arsenal have discovered - perhaps by accident, perhaps by inspiration - a new back four to rival the heroes of old.

Their statistics in the Champions League this season defy belief: no goals conceded in nine games, including away trips to Real Madrid and Juventus, and a new competition record of 829 minutes without conceding.

There were times against Villarreal when the new-look defence rode its luck.

Gilberto could so easily have given away a penalty for his challenge on Riquelme, then Lehmann had to dive to cut out a cross following a Toure mistake. But Arsenal’s defenders are not just there to defend.

Eboue’s pacy runs down the right wing have become a feature of their play and he is not averse to moments of inspired skill, such as the clever lob that so unluckily found Hleb offside in the second half, or the drilled cross from which Henry had an effort cleared off the line.

But the moment that really mattered was provided by Toure, stretching at the near post to slide home his first goal of the season from Hleb’s perfectly-weighted low cross. One-nil to the Arsenal. Now where have you heard that before?