Having the best defence in the league is likely to earn Manchester United a place in the top four, but will Louis van Gaal’s tactic of dominating possession and preventing the opposition from building attacks be bold enough to win the title?

Much has been said about Louis van Gaal’s approach to winning football matches at Manchester United. While his team is doing just that, their manager can continue to fend off criticism, especially following a weekend in which Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur all failed to pick up three points.

While fans urge his team to attack, Van Gaal can point to the facts. A fourth consecutive clean sheet in the league at the weekend leaves them with the best defensive record in the top flight. They have conceded just eight times and now sit just two points off the top spot. Van Gaal’s side were also fourth after 12 matches last season, but this time around they are five points better off.

Seven teams have scored more goals than United this season and 15 teams have taken more shots. Their meagre tally of 10.3 shots per game is less than every club but for Sunderland, Stoke and Newcastle. However, despite their struggles going forward, Van Gaal’s team keep picking up clean sheets and decent results. Such a modest number of shots has come despite averaging the most possession (57.2%) in the league, though their desire to keep the ball is as much a defensive measure as an attacking one in United’s case.

Van Gaal seems welded to the idea that, if the other team don’t have the ball, they can’t any goals. It might be frustrating viewing for fans, but his approach is bearing some fruit. Only league leaders Manchester City have conceded fewer shots per game (8.8) – and dominating possession tends to correlate more closely with defending against shots than creating them. Bournemouth’s passing approach has helped them limit the number of shots on their goal but it hasn’t helped them hurt the opposition. And Crystal Palace (16.8 shots conceded per game), Newcastle (16.7) and Sunderland (16.6) have conceded the most shots while surrendering possession.

However, will keeping the ball for long periods without committing many players forward be enough to maintain United’s title challenge? Is a better defensive record more important than a free-flowing attack?

Only three of the last 10 Premier League winners have boasted both the best defence and the best attack in the league. Managers usually have to prioritise a route to the title, either through outgunning opponents or shutting them out.

Eleven of the 16 champions this century have led the goalscoring charts in their title-winning seasons, with United responsible for six of those under Alex Ferguson. The fans who enjoyed those attack-minded teams have had to settle for a more prosaic approach under their new manager. It’s no coincidence that, beyond Anthony Martial, who has a rating 7.51, their next six highest rated players are all defensively minded.

Manchester United’s top rated players this season. Infographic: WhoScored

For the first time in six campaigns, the top scorers did not win the league title last season. Chelsea conceded the fewest goals (32 in 28 matches) but Manchester City scored 10 more than them. However, that result was an anomaly for recent years – five of the last six champions have not possessed the league’s best defence. In recent years then, the onus has been placed on attacking. For example, when Manchester United finished 11 points clear of their nearest rivals in Alex Ferguson’s last season in charge, in 2012-13, they only had the sixth best defensive record in the division.



Outscoring title rivals hasn’t always been the key to success though. In six of the seven years leading up to the 2009-10 season, the team that conceded the fewest goals won the league. In José Mourinho’s first spell in England, Chelsea conceded just 61 goals over three seasons. Only in his second season at the club did they score as many goals as their title rivals, sharing their place at the top of the goalscoring chart with Manchester United on 72 goals, but that tally was the lowest for league champions this millennium.



Not since the year 2000 has a team with the best defensive record finished outside the top three, so perhaps Van Gaal’s approach is more about protecting his club’s position in the Champions League than going all out for the title. It’s a bewildering line of thought in a season when no side has really staked any great claim for superiority – you have to go back to 2001 to find league leaders with fewer points at this stage of the season (26).

Perhaps Van Gaal’s idealism is so pronounced that he sees progress year on year – with next season set to be his last – as a greater achievement than winning the league this season and dropping back off the pace in his final year at the club. So much of his ethos revolves around “the process” and small steps being taken to reach an eventual goal. He is in no hurry to change things or bow to the crowd’s cries of “attack, attack, attack”, with defence still very much at the heart of this United team.

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All statistics courtesy of WhoScored.com, where you can find live in-game data as well as player and team ratings. You can follow all the scores, statistics, live player and team ratings with their free app.



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