**Mikel Arteta**explained his thoughts on a 2-0 win for **Arsenal**against **Brighton**in the Carabao Cup.
The Gunners heavily rotated off the back of a 1-0 victory over Crystal Palace on the weekend, and the makeshift lineup looked like a team that had to go through the gears as the guests came close to scoring twice in the opening ten minutes and threatened repeatedly through Georginio Rutter.
However, the manager was willing to trust in his players after the break, and they rewarded his faith through a go-ahead goal from **Ethan Nwaneri**before Bukayo Saka sealed the deal with a second.
*“A very special evening, to be fair, very happy for various reasons. Obviously, we are in the quarter-finals, we won the game against a really tough opponent. We made 10 changes, we played players that never played together, we had two huge debuts for Max Dowman and Andre Harriman-Annous.*
“That feeling of giving the opportunity to somebody and fulfilling a dream is unique. I'm very happy that things turned out to be very positive and we managed to win the game.
“It's some very sloppy giveaways that we did give, in very dangerous areas. We didn't apply two or three rules that we always have in second phases, for example, and we could have been punished.
“Kepa* made a brilliant save, they made another big chance. It was more the feeling that we were struggling a bit. But I expected that, when you make 10 changes and you put players that have never played before, some of them, they haven't played much as well this season, you have to gamble.*
“But I was ready to take that risk and in the second half I thought, ok, we have to start the next 10-15 minutes in a different way. We certainly did that and the game shifted momentum.
“[I said] that we have to be very aggressive when we have the chance. They were going man to man as well. They were very aggressive in our first phase. Once we unlocked that, we had a lot of spaces and we certainly exploit that much better in the second half.”