The dev team does defend itself by claiming the 51 percent attack that led the double-spending was not its fault. Instead, it blamed the Proof-of-Work consensus style on which Bitcoin Gold operates.
Serious I am really surprised by the above statement by the team, how can a dev made such a statement? are they not suppose to find a consensus style that will make their network secured from such an attack? it's obvious that they don't have anything to offer, it's better they just leave the space.