Arsenal's Declan Rice (left) and Kai Havertz react after the Premier League match at Vitality Stadium, Brighton. (Image: PA)
Arsenal's Declan Rice (left) and Kai Havertz react after the Premier League match at Vitality Stadium, Brighton. (Image: PA)
Arsenal’s 100 per cent start to the season was undone in a 3-0 defeat away to Brighton on Saturday afternoon, caught out by their intense press and a couple of long-range strikes.
Brighton were quick out of the gates, closing down Arsenal relentlessly in possession, forcing errors and making the game uncomfortable in build-up. It’s been a while since the Gunners faced such a high-energy press and playing their fourth away game in a row, they had no answer for it.
Arsenal tried to play through the press time after time, but kept misplacing passes or spending too long on the ball to get out reliably. Compared with last season, they also went long far less, and even when they did, Kai Havertz struggled to make it stick.
It’s difficult to read too much into the goals that Arsenal did concede, with two long-range strikes and a corner goal. It was sloppy but it happens on a bad day.
What was more worrying was how wasteful Arsenal were when they did break the press or get a period of possession. Mikel Arteta has persisted with Bukayo Saka, Martin Ødegaard and Christos Tzolis behind Havertz in the opening league games, to great effect, but in an end-to-end battle they weren’t able to capitalise enough.
A lack of pace was obvious early in the game, and even on the bench only Noni Madueke looked like a solution to that.
Having sold Gabriel Martinelli in the summer, there’s a big gap in the Arsenal squad in terms of pace in the attacking areas, and while most games won’t require it as much, having an option to stretch the game and run in behind will still be valuable throughout the season.
As the board explore attacking additions in January, pace needs to be top of the list.
The other gap when attacking against Brighton was the dribbling, with both Saka and Tzolis were having off days but the changes to Eberechi Eze and Max Dowman came too late. When other teams try those same tactics, Arteta needs to figure out a better balance far earlier in the game.
It leaves Arsenal 2nd with four wins from five Premier League games heading into a three week international break. Getting through the beginning of the season, without William Saliba, winning every game bar one is a great start, and one bad game shouldn’t tarnish that.