An extraordinarily late and frankly undeserved goal from Neil Maupay who had earlier been involved in a controversial incident when Bernd Leno was seriously injured in a first half incident saw Arsenal fall to a second successive defeat since the restart of Premier League football. Maupay who scored the winner in the game in London in December also tried to get Matteo Guendouzi into trouble at the final whistle. A season that for me has been ghastly throughout seems to be getting worse and worse! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We moved from rainy Manchester to the sunny South Coast for our second game of the restarted season. Understandably Mikel Arteta rang the changes after a bitterly disappointing night at the Emptihad. What seemed like it might be a 4-4-2 line-up actually morphed straight into 4-3-3 with Saka playing in a central playmaking role, the berth Mesut Ozil, who was on the bench, might have expected to take. Kolasinac replaced Tierney who dropped to the bench with Rob Holding returning given our dearth of centre backs. Pepe was restored on the right hand side. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was pleased that the commemoration of\nthose who have lost their lives in the pandemic was greeted with a respectful\nsilence. The clapping that was used to mark it at The Swamp on Friday is ok if\nyou are acknowledging the retirement or death of a great servant of a club but\nnot the death of over 41,000 people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first ten minutes were very open compared with the tentative opening on Wednesday. Saka and Guendouzi caught the eye early on. Saka rattled the bar in the seventh minute and two last – gasp challenges foiled Lacazette and a fine Ryan save to his left from a diving header from Lacazette kept the scoresheet blank. Then Leno in chasing a ball which he tried to catch while staying within the area was tipped off balance by a crafty but hardly malicious challenge from Maupay. It was another horror moment following so many in the past- Eduardo, Ramsey, Diaby , Holding, Bellerin, Chambers and now our excellent German custodian who angrily berated Maupay as he went off suggesting that the seemingly innocuous touch might have been the causation of his serious-looking injury. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leno was replaced by Emi Martinez who was called into action early on to make an excellent save low down to his right from Mooy. We recovered some equilibrium towards the interval with Aubameyang and Lacazette combining well only to be thwarted by good defending by Webster for Brighton. A disjointed first-half ended goalless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Half-\ntime Brighton 0 Arsenal 0 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The overall impression at this stage was that this Arsenal side is some way from the one that Arteta must desire. Inevitably with the shortage of centre backs we look vulnerable defensively to set pieces although Mustafi had a decent game next to a clearly very nervous Rob Holding. We started the second half trying to play at a faster pace and Aubameyang was ruled just offside after breaking from thirty- five yards out. VAR confirmed it was just offside. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Martinez made a good near- post save from Maupay and Ryan saved from Aubameyang after he combined well with Lacazette. Then on 67 minutes we saw the value of the inverted winger when Pepe moved inside and swung a delicious shot over Ryan into the top left – hand corner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Brighton\n0 Arsenal 1 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If we felt that this was the catalyst for a more confident Arsenal display to emerge we were mistaken. Our vulnerability to high crosses is well – known but the short- corner routine on 75 minutes saw Ceballos fall asleep and Lacazette fail to provide right-side cover as Dunk threw himself at the cross from the left and speared it past a despairing Holding on the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brighton\n1 Arsenal 1 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A raft of substitutions followed on each side although Arteta was prevented from bringing on Tierney with Nketiah by what seemed to be a slip by the fourth official. Eventually Tierney was joined by Willock and Nelson for Ceballos, Saka and Pepe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Aubameyang strived hard to score with two\ndeflected efforts and Mustafi had a header well saved by Ryan. Meanwhile\nBissouma was named Man of the Match after an impressive performance of cynical\nblocking and several late tackles. That the hapless Atkinson could book\nLacazette for one foul and excuse Bissouma numerous fouls was incomprehensible.\nBurn, booked early on was lucky to stay on after clattering Peoe on a couple of\noccasions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our afternoon turned completely tits-up in injury time when Brighton broke down the left and a smart move between McAllister, Connolly and Maupay saw the French striker score delicately at the near post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Brighton\n2 Arsenal 1 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a nightmare end and in his after-match interview a clearly angry Arteta accused his side of failing to compete for the goals and missing too many chances. Time did not permit him further analysis but my initial conclusions are that this side requires serious surgery. Losing at Citeh in the odd circumstances of Wednesday\u2019s game is one thing but to lose to an ordinary side of honest toilers like Brighton ( or in Bissouma\u2019s case a purveyor of the dark arts albeit one that might improve our side ) is quite another. Certainly we need a strong midfield leader despite Guendouzi\u2019s honest toil and clear quality, we must get a stronger defensive base and get much more convincing at playing out from the back. In the early stages it felt like the early days of Emery\u2019s tenure and while Saka shows immense promise we need more creativity in midfield and must be more ruthless upfront. <\/p>\n\n\n\n From memory this is almost exactly what Bath said in his perceptive note yesterday. I hope we give Arteta a chance to build a proper framework although he will have to do so without being able to parachute in star names as our financial position won\u2019t allow us to. Since Thursday we have lost Mari and Leno to injuries that may keep them out until the end of the year. That reduces his options still further because we were starting to feel those were two positions where we had solutions in place. The media love an Arsenal crisis and having watched Southampton yesterday we may find our game with them very taxing next week. This will generate lots of press negativity. I hope we realise we have a top-quality coach in place but we need to give him the time to find the tools to build a new Arsenal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An extraordinarily late and frankly undeserved goal from Neil Maupay who had earlier been involved in a controversial incident when Bernd Leno was seriously injured in a first half incident saw Arsenal fall to a second successive defeat since the restart of Premier League football. Maupay who scored the winner in the game in London […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=950"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":960,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions\/960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}