Arteta: This is a big lesson
Mikel Arteta was less than impressed by his side’s limp display as Brighton ran out deserved 3-0 winners at the Amex.
Arsenal arrived hoping to extend their winning league run to 10 games, but were blown away in the first half by long-range strikes from Pascal Gross and Charalampos Kostoulas. With the Gunners showing little sign of mounting a comeback, Chema Andres headed home from a corner before the hour mark to complete the scoring.
After playing with such swagger during the opening weeks of the season, Arsenal were second best in every department. Outfought from the first minute, they quickly lost confidence in their passing and slumped to a chastening defeat, their heaviest since Brighton won by the same scoreline at the Emirates in May 2023.
“Extremely disappointed,” was the manager’s immediate reaction in his post-game press conference.
“But first of all, I think we have to congratulate Brighton for the victory. I think they deserve it. I think they were the better team. And from our side, there were certain basics that you need to accomplish in football, especially in the Premier League, that we were very far from.
“[We didn’t] Win the first duel or every second ball. That put the game, especially how direct they were, in a really difficult place for us.
“On top of that, when we did regain the ball, especially in our half, the amount of technical errors that we did, we didn’t respect any principle of play that you have to, to get out of that man-to-man situation, so that put us always in the back foot, so it was very difficult to control the game.
“When we had moments of dominance and control, then we opened them up, but we didn’t as well finish those actions with the quality that is required to compensate all the other things that you have done. So at the end of the day, I think they deserve to win the game, and it’s a big lesson for us.”
On why the game swung away from his side so dramatically, Arteta said: “Well, the first one, it was Brighton; they were really good, and they had another bite, and their timing was better.
“There are a lot of moments when the ball is fifty-fifty, and it changes hands, and most of the time it was for them. Sometimes there were some technical errors very much involved that opened us up in a really difficult way, but that’s something to learn.
“That’s not going to take away what the team has done, and the boys have done in the last six or seven weeks since coming back from the World Cup.
“Because with 18 players coming back, what we’ve done and the way we’ve competed and the amount of games that we won has been remarkable, but this is a big lesson for all of us to understand what it takes to win at this level.”
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