Some of the decade’s best defensive partnerships in the Premier League

Anyone who’s played a team sport knows the saying: “attack wins games but defence wins championships”. This rings true in football, where statistics like goals conceded can often matter as much as goals scored. That’s also why we’ve analysed some of the best defenders in the game, from Virgil Van Dijk to David Luiz.

With that in mind, it’s only fitting that we take a look at some of the best defensive partnerships to grace the Premier League in recent years.

Virgil Van Dijk and Joel Matip

While this duo may be rather new, a recent Champions League trophy with Liverpool makes it easy to see why Squawka puts them at the top of the list of today’s centre-back partnerships. Originally though, Van Dijk was paired up with Dejan Lovren and Joe Gomez, until they both got injured, which gave Joel Matip the opportunity to step up. The partnership seems to have clicked as the two are often credited as being part of the reason that Liverpool can hold their own against the very best European teams, with bwin Football Betting Odds even putting them as favourites in a match against Barcelona earlier in the Champions League semi-finals despite it being at the Camp Nou. Even though they ended up losing that match, we all know what happened in the return leg at Anfield.

Although Virgil Van Dijk cost the club £75 million and Matip took a while to get going at Anfield, it seems that the duo could have what it takes to help the club win more silverware in the coming years.