Defence the best form of attack

V Sivapalan writes:

"This year, Chelsea became English champions by soundly beating their more illustrious opponents that, between them, have shared the championship for the last 10 years.

Chelsea became champions conceding only a measly 15 goals, compared to 36 by Arsenal and 26 by United. Arsenal, however, scored 87 goals whereas Chelsea only scored 72. United did very badly by scoring only 58. If attack is the best form of defence, then Arsenal should not have conceded more than twice the goals scored against Chelsea and should have won the championship, not lost (sic) it by 12 points.

The difference here was the solid Chelsea defence, ably marshalled in the centre by John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho, with the Premiership's best goalkeeper in Petr Cech and probably one of the world's best defensive midfielders in Claude Makelele. In fact, since Makelele left Real Madrid two years ago, they haven't won anything.

As for Arsenal and United, both teams have been struggling with poor quality goalkeepers and defensive problems, with United defender Rio Ferdinand being suspended for half the season while Arsenal's Sol Campbell was injured for long periods. I remember when United were winning titles in the 1990s, they had Peter Schmiechel, at that time one of the world's best goalkeepers.

It goes to show that without a great defence, even the best attack cannot win you championships. How does this apply to business? Even in business, there is attack and defence. I would call sales and marketing the attack part of the business while internal systems, financial controls and human resource skills are the defensive part."