Football, eh?
Yesterday the requirements were:
Arsenal did both of those and yet I don’t think you’ll find an Arsenal fan alive today who will tell you that felt easy. It very much didn’t.
The first worry came with the absence of both Calafiori and Timber, as this season and the constant injury problems continue to plague Arteta and his squad. I mean, honestly, at this stage it is laughable the number of injuries this team has had. Every single week, something happens, to the point at which we’re no longer waiting on team news, we’ve just accepted that something bad will happen with somebody that we’ll find out about one hour before kick off.
The good news was that at least we had the positive squad news that big Gabi returned to the match day squad and he even got on the pitch for the last stages of the game, which was met with a racuous cheer from the home fans. We needed that at that moment, for reasons i’ll come to shortly.
Because before that cheer, we had gotten ourselves into a commanding position by the hour mark. We absolutely dominated Brighton in the first half and had 15 shots, six on target, a fabulous Odegaard finish from outside the box and some really presentable chances pretty much from the first minute; Big Vik will be pretty disappointed with his tame effort in the opening stages and I think most of us were pretty frustrated too – this was the kind of chance that we’d seen him tuck away time and time again in Portugal and whilst we can all ask questions about how the team need to feed him more, he has to do better with the chances he does get. That wasn’t the finish of an elite marksman and with Kai returning and Gabby J getting more and more minutes, he might start to find his chances starting to dwindle.
Thankfully, we were ahead pretty quickly in the game and Odegaard’s finish was like that of the Martin we saw from a few season’s back, which we need to see more of for the second half of the season if we’re going to have a successful end to it. But on this day he did his job, he got us off the mark and at halftime, the question was whether we’d be able to finish our chances in the second. we’d already had a brilliant opportunity with the Zubi flick and Trossard instant shot over the bar straight from that chance, Saka had flashed a ball across the goal, Merino had an effort blocked too. But we did need that second. So when Declan Rice got himself obliged by Ritter’s head to bag us yet another own goal, the fear of relaxation and relief in the stadium was palpable.
As a quick aside, how about that Declan Rice fella, eh? Honestly, he can play anywhere and be brilliant and filling in at right back yesterday, he played the role to perfection. If we have striker problems that continue, I feel like he could probably be the answer to our problems, because this guy is absolutely elite.
So it’s 2-0, we’re all happy and earlier in the season it would have been a case of “shut it down” and Arsenal would have suffocated a Brighton side who had created zero chances in the first half. But this current iteration of recent weeks hasn’t been able to keep games locked down like earlier in the season (some of that inevitably because of the personnel changes brought about by injuries) and so when Brighton got one back with basically their first chance of the game, there was a feeling of inevitability about a potential equaliser.
And there probably was going to be one, were it not for David Raya pulling off one of the saves of the season. It was a worldie and Minteh must have thought he’d scored. But Raya – who’d basically had nothing to do all game – earned his money with that one save alone and we were able to close out what was a tense encounter in the end.
We talked about this on the [Same Old Arsenal pod](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a4DQCsm7uA) this morning, but it’s funny (not funny) how we are all reacting to what is ostensibly a run of games where we’ve been winning. We won against Wolves, Everton and now a good Brighton team, are top of the league and at present managing to keep City at arms length. The Everton and Brighton performances have actually been really good too. But some of the battle scars of previous seasons, plus I think the late goals we were conceding of late have, I think, coloured the reality of the situation. And that is that Arsenal are holding firm at a time in which it isn’t 100% clicking. In addition, we’re looking at City and thinking they are ‘back’ but, as Amanda pointed out on the pod this morning, their fans are hardly crowing at how amazing City have been.
We do need a spark though. We need something. We need a statement win that has us scoring lots, winning well, performing like yesterday but doing it in a way that has people using words like “inevitable” or “imperious” and alike. It’s not quite there at the moment and that has us feeling a little bit like this is a slog that is unsustainable in the long term.
With Villa on the horizon I can’t see it being that game, but I do think we will need to be better than yesterday to overcome a team who won at Chelsea yesterday and continue to surprise a lot of people. I think the return of Big Gabi at the back will help us – but I also think that we need that attack to spark to life – sooner rather than later.
Back tomorrow for some more thoughts as we start to look ahead to Villa at home. See you then.