Former Liverpool defender and Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher says that while the glamorous attacking Arsenal football may be what gets the headlines, it is the players on defensive duty who are the unsung heroes.

Since the opening day defeat at home to Aston Villa, in which Arsenal conceded 3 goals of comical calibre, the Gunners defence has shored up and now boast the second best goal difference in the League.

Carragher says this is down to the work of the back four, predominantly Per Mertesacker, Laurent Koscielny, Kieran Gibbs and either Bacary Sagna or Carl Jenkinson.

Young Guns

He also called for patience over current number 1 and Poland goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny:

“They've protected him well but there will be more to come from him. He's not the biggest or strongest but that's the modern keeper. He's a bit panicky but everybody has bad days and the longer he's there the more confident he will get.”

Szczesny is still only 23 however having played 116 times in an Arsenal shirt, the shot-stopper is now an established Premier League goalkeeper. With the pressure of £1million loanee Emiliano Viviano sitting behind him, Szczesny has done all he can to keep his starting place.

The Liverpool man also specifically picked on 24-year-old Kieran Gibbs as a sign of how the Gunners defence has bonded as a team this season, even targeting a place in Roy Hodgson’s England side for the young left-back:

“I've been particularly impressed with Kieran Gibbs. He's had a lot of injury problems over the last two years and that's stunted his progress. It's about time he really pushed on and cemented his place at Arsenal.

“He's a left-back everybody has talked about for a long time. England have a lot of quality in that position with Ashley Cole and Leighton Baines but it's time for Gibbs to step up at Arsenal and at international level.”

Keep ‘em kickin’

Similarly, fellow pundit - and himself a former Manchester United defender – Gary Neville, praised the influence of free-signing Mathieu Flamini on the side as the rock who allows the creativity flow ahead of him:

"This season they have Mathieu Flamini and probably the strongest back four they've had for a while. I think when you dig beneath Arsenal's squad and you lose a couple of those players it gets a lot weaker. Those five are the key players to keep fit over the next few weeks."

Neville’s emphasis in keeping the back 5 of Flamini, Sagna, Mertesaker, Koscienly and Gibbs fit took a blow this week with the news that our French right-back faces a spell on the sidelines with a hamstring injury.

Bacary Sagna has a hamstring injury which means he will not feature against West Brom this weekend, however while Sagna was deputising for Koscielny and Mertesacker at centre-half earlier on in the season, Carl Jenkinson was putting in a string of fine performances at full-back.

Although Sagna is a huge miss, having a back-up such as Jenkinson can be nothing short of miraculous for Arsene Wenger.

Too soon to draw similarities?

Carragher even began to entail how the current back 4 reminded him of the great Arsenal defence of the 1990’s, an impenetrable force at the heart of a golden Gunners era:

“Individually, the Arsenal defenders aren't the best in the league in their position, but as a unit, although they aren't quite the standard of the old back four of the 1990s, there have been signs of late that they are doing a top job.”

“Watching the last half an hour at Swansea, I thought there were similarities between the new and old back four. They were defending deep and withstood a lot of pressure and that was what the old defence used to do.”

Some would argue that 6 games into the season is a ridiculous time to begin comparing the current back-line to that of the 90’s, arguably one of the best defensive units the game has had. However Carragher – once part of a fairly nifty Liverpool defence himself – believes that the modern group have the ability to achieve greatness:

“It's difficult to compare but what the current players will want is more clean sheets and that's what the old Arsenal back four were notorious for. As a defender you want clean sheets - it's like an attacker scoring a goal.”

“That is what they need to do before we start properly comparing them to Tony Adams and co!”

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