'Arsenal attack like the 'Invincibles' and defend like class of 97-98'

The way Arsenal are behaving at the moment reminds me very much of the Arsene Wenger teams I won three Premier League titles with.

In those teams, it was done from a strong base and Mikel Arteta's side has got a similar look about it, very similar characteristics, if not better in some ways.

The Gunners have only lost one game in all competitions and have conceded fewer goals than any other Premier League team.

The Gunners have the most clean sheets so far this season across all competitions and have won all of their past eight games without conceding.

Arteta's men have faced 75 shots in the Premier League this season - 19 fewer than any other team - and conceded only three goals.

There's a passion to defend as much as there is to score goals with this Arsenal team. I am seeing what I saw in the past. It had disappeared and now it's all coming back again.

Arsenal should never lose this DNA again, because they lost it for too long. The best way to keep it is to win something, to keep everyone together and that secures the future.

You have to live it, breathe it, keep it, eat it. Nothing else matters more, and it just becomes a part of your character and your personality. It's like a badge that you walk around with. It can take quite a few years to get to to that boiling point. And that's where Arsenal are now.

They just have to keep a lid on it.

The teams I lifted the top-flight title with in 1998, 2002 and 2004 all have something in common with Arteta's current side - all of them have suffered the pain of not winning something.

In 1998 we had gone six years without a title. In 2002 it came after we finished second behind Manchester United for three years in a row and again before the 2004 'Invincibles' season.

This team has finished runners-up for three successive seasons and it's a collective thing, the energy that comes out of defeats, you get to the stage where you're so incensed and so motivated to try to win.

It was mentioned to us that we were second best as a group because we kept coming second to Manchester United.

That breeds an inner feeling of 'over my dead body, this will not happen again, we're going to make sure we win this'. I can see all the similarities with this group.

The mentality changes when you see other teams picking up trophies and you're subjected to everybody else winning silverware, and the only thing you don't have is that same celebratory feel that comes at the end of any success. Those first photographs, they're not there yet.

You're not going to stop until that changes, until trophies start coming through the door.

It just sort of galvanizes and I'm seeing all of that now. It's like a fight breaks out, and there's three people that turn up at the fight.

It's maybe the wrong terminology to use, but you're never on your own. You never look around and think, 'I'm in trouble here'. There's always somebody who has your back because they're all of the same mentality, all of the same mindset.

Two or three years ago, I thought we're back in the fight again. Arteta has got that Arsenal fight. It had disappeared, that DNA disappeared and since Mikel came in, he has done a magnificent job of changing the culture.

I think there's been an internal fight for places that's made everybody go that little bit extra to add to the mix.

Gabriel looks like he's a leader. Declan Rice looks like he's a leader. I think Gyokeres looks a character. You want personality. You want character.

I remember the dressing room under Wenger and the pinnacle of that group - there was such an aura about the group, and there were so many leaders.

I can't chose between Sol Campbell and Tony Adams, Lauren or Lee Dixon. It's like asking me to choose between siblings. All I can tell you is every one of those was affected by the other, and all of them took that baton and that mood and that behaviour.

Some people, like maybe Nwankwo [Kanu] would only speak occasionally, but when he did, everybody listened because it really was impactful. I probably would have been more vocal than most. Everyone spoke. Everybody cared.

The Gunners equalled a 122-year-old club record by keeping their eighth consecutive clean sheet in all competitions.

But you don't want to be the best statistically, defensively, like we were in 1999 and still not be champions. You've got to be better in all areas.

The back four takes a lot of strength from all the plaudits and the talk about how this team is so good defensively because as a defender, you don't really grab the headlines.

Of course, it's different when you have Gabriel scoring loads of goals from set-pieces, but you do your job and then you get your pat on the back when you start to create history with your clean sheets.

In 1999 we only conceded 17 goals. That's the second-best ever in the Premier League, but it didn't win us anything.

There has been a lot of talk at the moment about the defensive platform, but it's what they do with the ball that will make them champions.

In 1997-98, we had Manu Petit and Patrick Vieira. Honestly, you could almost get your deck chairs out at the back because of the amount of work they were doing in front of us, but they needed good instruction to be in the right places.

Let's not forget Ray Parlour in all of this, on the right side, working, grafting, and then we kind of had Marc Overmars just tearing people apart. Dennis [Bergkamp] and [Nicolas] Anelka as well.

That was Wenger's sort of pioneer team. Before that, it was 'one-nil to the Arsenal' under George Graham. Wenger made us all become footballers, but then took it to the Invincibles a couple of years later.

I remember when Lauren came in at right-back. Ashley [Cole] was at left-back. Nigel Winterburn had gone. Dixon was still there. And he [Wenger] said, 'right, our right-back now Martin is going to be playing like a winger'.

I said, 'no problem, boss', but I was always in Lauren's ear to make sure we had a balance. I didn't want him to go forward too often because he was given a license by the manager to fly forward. So it evolved into more like we're seeing now with Arteta's full-backs.

Cole was actually a centre-forward in the Arsenal youth team who ended up playing left-back, but it's only a starting position. And the same for Lauren. Lauren was a midfield player who went to right-back. What I've seen now is probably very similar.

It's interesting because when they attack, they're able to attack like the Invincibles team with their full-backs, but they're able to defend like the 1997-98 group, nice and compact.

Arsenal have been pretty consistent over the past four years, but they've never looked as strong as they do now. This is a jigsaw puzzle we've been putting together for five years.

It is similar to the past title-winnings seasons. There was a strong defence, but obviously there also was a really good platform in midfield.

Arteta has been slowly putting the pieces together. Eze in the midfield. He's also got a new centre-forward in play, although, of course, he's desperate to have Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus back.

He's got two central defenders that are probably the best, if not the best in Europe.

[Cristhian] Mosquera is a player in the same mould, the same DNA. Maybe that wasn't the case with other replacements in the past.

At full-back, Ben White starts the season, then gets injured and [Jurrien] Timber has been a revelation ever since. And at left-back, you've got Riccardo Calafiori - an Italian international left-back - up against Myles Lewis-Skelly. It's one hell of a battle for a first team place, isn't it?

In front of them, Zubimendi is as good as anything I've seen in Europe. And then Declan Rice, he's like the modern day [former Manchester United and England captain] Bryan Robson. He's up and down the pitch. The distance he's covering is ridiculous, not to mention the quality on the delivery.

The only thing missing from their CV is trophies. We can see with our own eyes how good the defence is.

If they could be champions, they reach that elite level alongside these past title-winning teams.

But there's nothing won, there are no celebrations. There's lots to go in the season. They need to be lucky.

In the past, I've described it like a tug-of-war. When you win and they lose, the rope comes your way, and if they win and you lose, it goes the opposite way.

At the moment, Arsenal are pulling hard in that tug-of-war, and they're toppling their opponents. Because when you when you win emphatically - like they're doing in all competitions - everyone's looking at their opponent. They're all messaging each other.

That's all Arsenal are doing at the moment, they've sent a huge message that they're in the race here. They're massively in this race. You're going to see now the other teams wake up.

So we're in for a cracking rest of season.