Michael Carrick believes defence could turn out to be the best form of attack for Manchester United this season, after yesterday's shutout of Chelsea at Old Trafford completed a run of five successive clean sheets.

"Five clean sheets on the trot is a great achievement," he said. "I know we play good football with plenty of flair but a lot of our game is based on how we defend.

"The back four and Edwin van der Sar have had a lot of credit lately and rightly so.

"But right from the front, I think everyone is doing their job defensively really well. We are very solid and we want to continue that because we will always create chances with the forward players we have."

Most of United's nine Barclays Premier League title triumphs under Sir Alex Ferguson have been based on the type of flair and entertainment Roman Abramovich craves at Chelsea.

While those ideals have not been abandoned this season, the platform for their current five-match winning streak has been provided by defensive solidity.

Manchester City's Geovanni is the last person to score against United, with a deflected effort past Edwin van der Sar eight and a half hours of match time ago.

It represents United's best run for over two years, and has seen them recover from a poor start to the campaign, where they were second bottom prior to the home win over Tottenham Hotspur, to second in the Premier League, below only Arsenal.

"It was so early in the season, we just felt it was important to keep on doing what we had been," Carrick said. "We were playing well enough, we just had to wait until the results turned around.

"We got on to a run of 1-0s and it looked like it was going to be the same against Chelsea. But we finally got another one, so we will take that and move on."