This season we've kept an impressive 9 clean sheets. Only 8 PL teams have kept more than that this season and is more than Arsenal, Manchester United and even Brighton, who have been a more defensive side than us. That suggests we've got more than a tidy defence about us. However, we have the third worst defensive record in the division, which suggests we don't.

Exactly how good is our defence based on stats? Let's have a look.

Only Huddersfield and Burnley have conceded 4 or more goals on more occasions than us. No side has conceded 3 or more goals more often than us. That suggests that we are we have been easy to score lots of goals against. Newcastle, Everton and Watford are the only non top 6 sides to score 3 or more against us, so our batterings have mainly come against the top 6.

If we were to remove all games where clean sheets were kept, we've conceded 2.46 goals a game when we have conceded in games. That's the worst record in the division. In other words, if we do concede, teams will fancy their chances of grabbing more.

We've only conceded 1 on 7 occasions, conceding more than 1 on 21 occasions. Last season we conceded just 1 on 19 occasions, and more than one on 8 occasions. While not as bad as Fulham, our defence, which was so dependable last season, hasn't coped well enough this time around.

Despite our possession stats, we allow 14.7 shots on our goal per game. Burnley, Fulham and Brighton allow more than us, so we are effective to a point at not allowing teams to get attempts on our goal. In a calculation of opposition possession and shots conceded, only 7 PL teams allow less attempts on their goal given the amount of possession they concede. In short, we concede more shots at goal because we don't have much of the ball more than because our defenders aren't so good.

Sadly for us, only Bournemouth, Fulham and Huddersfield concede more goals per opposition attempts than us. We might be good at preventing teams getting too many attempts at goal for all the possession they have, but they are capable of creating good, convertable chances. We haven't let in many brilliant goals this season, we've certainly let in more soft goals.

Home form was always going to be key to our success. We've conceded more goals at home than any other team, 38 in total. 2 per game. That's woeful, especially when you consider we've kept 5 clean sheets at home. Surprisingly, we've kept 4 clean sheets away from home and conceded only 31 goals on our travels. 7 of the 12 occasions when we've conceded 3 or more have been at home, 5 away. We've scored nearly twice as many at home than we have away, so trying to take the game to the opposition has served our defence less well.

In terms of our clean sheets, 8 of the 9 came against the 10 teams most likely to not score in a game. Leicester and Palace are the only 2 PL sides to have managed more blanks at home than away (Palace have failed to score in 8 of their home matches compared with 3 away). While I'm not suggesting that keeping a clean sheet in the PL is a simple task, 2 were due to Etheridge penalty saves while the ones we have kept have a certain degree of predictability to them due to failings on the opposition part.

To sum up, we could be defensively resolute, especially against teams that struggled to score goals away or at home. At home our defence was rubbish but better away. When teams managed to pick us open, and they could spend ages trying to get a good goalscoring chance, they tended to find a way. Our back 4 was good enough in the Championship, but combined with our tactics, wasn't good enough at the top table.