match report – player ratings – Video
Arsenal enter 2023 seven points clear at the top of the table after a 4-2 win over Brighton last night.
Ending the old year in style, we got off to a fast start when Bukayo Saka put us ahead by just over a minute. The touch and shot was as calm as you want, but in the analysis of the goal itself, the fact was lost that if the ball had not dropped, it would surely have been a penalty for an obvious handball from the Brighton defender. I would prefer a goal to a penalty anyway, but we would have had another bite on the cake.
In those first few minutes we were well up front, Oleksandr Zinchenko almost made it 2-0 and there was a foretaste of things to come when Martin Odegaard produced a moment of magic in the box with a nutmeg pass to Martinelli in a space the size of a phone booth, but the Brazilian’s cut to the center was cleared.
The game leveled off and we allowed Brighton to come back at least in terms of possession. I thought we were sometimes too passive, but the home team didn’t particularly threaten us either. Five minutes from the break, Odegaard doubled the lead with a corner kick that he didn’t clear very well. It seemed like it wasn’t the cleanest shot of him, bouncing down and then up and over the defender’s desperate leap, but such is the quality of him that it can’t be ruled out that it was deliberate either. I think he meant it.
The second half started strong. Gabriel Martinelli had it quite difficult against Tariq Lamptey, who defended well in the first half. When the ball came to him this time, he didn’t try to step back with his right foot as he had previously, instead shooting with his left foot too hard for the goalkeeper to catch. And when you take a sniff at a poacher like Eddie Nketiah, he’s usually around to make you pay. He did just that, driving the ball home for his second goal in as many games. By the way, I don’t think we’ll talk much about Martinelli’s left foot. Three of his seven goals this season have come with his left foot, and now this ‘assist’ too. That additional threat that he can present going the other way is an important aspect of his efficiency as an attacker.
Given the way we’ve controlled games this season, that should have been it, but Brighton are a good team and they kept going. There were some warning signs before their target, and after they took out Ben White, there was a vulnerability that they took advantage of. Suddenly, the ball over the top was ready for them down their left inner channel, and Kaoru Mitoma, who had been pretty quiet all night, came to life to retrieve it.
Our response was outstanding. We survived another Brighton scare, before Martin Odegaard produced one of the best passes you’ll see all season. The way he moved to take the ball from Granit Xhaka, with him looking up a couple of times for space and Martinelli was excellent, but the execution of the pass itself was world class. The perfect angle, the perfect weight, and Martinelli flashed past Lamptey and tipped him off. I’ve seen people talking about how I should have fixed it for Saka, but that just feels like the most useless argument ever. He scored. What more do people want? Enjoy a goal of sublime quality in its creation. The ‘what if it fails?’ it is irrelevant. I liked the finish.
That really should have closed out the game, but Brighton scored again. There is no doubt that William Saliba has returned from the World Cup a bit rusty. This was the kind of situation he would normally deal with calmly and nonchalantly (in the best sense of the word), but he misjudged it, allowing young forward Evan Ferguson to take a nice touch and then roll it between Ramsdale’s legs. .
Mikel Arteta activated Rob Holding’s plan, which looked set to backfire when he stuck out a toe to deflect a Mitoma shot past his own keeper. That would have been 3-4 with minutes to go, but the VAR intervened. The Brighton man had returned from an offside position but was extremely tight. I don’t think he would have enjoyed those last few minutes if the goal had stood. But it was not to be, and the match ended 4-2 for Arsenal.
It was clearly not a perfect performance, and it was notable that the coach spoke afterwards about how his players recognized that in the locker room afterwards:
My excitement comes when I walk into the dressing room and the players are talking about what they should have done better today. That means they know that we can still play better, be better and against Newcastle we will have to be better.
Still, he called it a ‘big win’, and I think he’s correct. We went to a team that has given us a lot of problems in recent seasons and scored four goals away from home. The fact that Man City lost points beforehand was also a factor. Saka and Odegaard used the “We don’t care about other teams, we focus on ourselves” mantra on Sky afterwards, but that’s what you say publicly. Arteta was a bit more open and said of course they knew the result and how that provides a bit of extra opportunity/pressure, but this isn’t the first time we’ve had to deal with it this season. City have lost points and we have taken advantage of them; City have played before us and closed the gap, and we have responded. That tells you something about this team.
Obviously the Premier League table also tells you a lot. We are on pole position here. There’s a long way to go, but on New Year’s Day with 43 points from 16 games and a 7-point gap over a team as good as Man City is an incredible place to be at this point in the season. There’s always going to be wobbles during games, we had it last night, but we still did more than enough to win the game. We can work on things that weren’t quite right, but we have to recognize the quality and effort that we have at the table at the moment.
Chapeau, you could say.
Well, that’s all for this morning. We’ll have an Arsecast Extra for you tomorrow, as usual, and we’ll focus on Newcastle, coming to town on Tuesday.
Happy New Year Friends!
