Brighton 1-1 Arsenal: Another mad decision, but Gunners lack of firepower exposed

Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video

I’m going to break down today’s blog into different sections. It just seems like the best way to go through last night’s 1-1 draw with Brighton.

First Half

I thought it was a generally solid first half performance from us. With Kai Havertz still unavailable, and Martin Odegaard also suffering from illness, Ethan Nwaneri kept his place on the right hand side. And it was from there that our goal came. Declan Rice and Mikel Merino combined well, the latter played a nice ball over the top – I think it was for Rice but Nwaneri took it on.

We know he’s a player who can score goals, and this finish – while not the most convincing he’ll ever produce – demonstrated his desire and confidence. He had Rice steaming alongside him and could have played a simple pass for a tap-in, but he went for goal and was rewarded.

Brighton’s only real chance of the game came when Jorginho was caught in possession (an unfortunate feature of his performance last night), but an off-balance Simon Adingra put his shot wide when he should have scored. Nwaneri picked up a laughable booking for time-wasting when waiting to take a corner and that was basically that.

Second half

I thought the introduction of Gabriel Martinelli was tied to the yellow card for Nwaneri, but it turns out it was because the 17 year old has suffered an injury. “Really bad news“, said Mikel Arteta, more on that anon. Brighton made a couple of changes too as they tried to get back into it.

We had a free kick after Pervis Estupinan produced a wild challenge to flatten Rice in the air. For those who think Nwaneri’s booking was justified, explain to me how taking a few seconds over a corner – that the ref can just add on by the way – is more worthy of a yellow card than this one? From the resulting free kick, we had a chance to score, Merino sliced wide as Rice delivered a low ball into the box, but in mitigation it’s tough when it’s coming through a sea of legs like that.

But then …

The Penalty

I’ll admit I went full circle on this. In real time, I looked at it and thought ‘How?!’ Then when they showed replays, I felt like I couldn’t complain. If an Arsenal forward headed the ball in the box then a defender headed him, would I want the penalty? 100%. How many times have you seen them given when a defender is about the leather the ball away, but a forward gets a tiny touch and the defender kicks the man rather than the ball? It felt like one of those.

However, slow-motion shows Saliba also headed the ball after Joao Pedro touched it, so to punish him for it feels really, really harsh. I don’t blame the referee here, by the way. He couldn’t have seen that. This was a job for VAR, but from what we understand they checked and cleared it in seconds. They didn’t look at that slow motion footage, which is absurd because they can take 5 minutes to check an offside if they want. There’s no closing the stable door on this technology now, but the very least we can expect is that they use it to its fullest and on this occasion they completely failed to do so.

Arteta said:

I’ve never seen a decision like this in my career. I asked the boys if they have and nobody has seen it before. When you look at the incident, the distance, the player, Joao Pedro touching the ball and Saliba touching the ball. You can see contact there.

Pedro scored, it was 1-1, and you could put that whole incident down on the long list of things that happen to Arsenal and never, ever to another club. Even this season we’ve had this, the Rice and Trossard red cards when the delaying the restart rule was only applicable to us, and they have been costly in terms of points. And if the Pedro incident is a penalty, so was the tug on Gabriel in the first half. Frustrating, to say the least.

Second half redux

Penalty aside though, this was a very tired second half performance in which we created almost nothing of note. There was one shot on target, a Rice effort which was easily saved, and a Partey header he should have done much better with, and that was about it. Odegaard came off his sick bed to try and make an impact, but looked like he needed to be at home with a goblet of Lemsip and a hot-water bottle, and that was as much as we had to offer.

There were two Academy kids on the bench, and a plethora of left-backs. So, while I can completely understand why we lacked some energy (we played a tough game on Wednesday while Brighton played two days previously and had more rest), this is a game – much like the one against Ipswich – which hammered home the need for urgent reinforcement in the attacking third.

The injury to Nwaneri – muscular according to Arteta – compounds our issues in that sense. Against Brentford and in the first half here, we’d gained a player, but in typical fashion for this season, we’ve lost him straight away. I don’t know yet how long he’ll be out but either way this is a group of players who are going to really struggle over the course of this month unless the club does something to help them.

As it stands, we have Trossard (who was poor yesterday), Jesus, and Martinelli, with the return of Havertz in the future but he was too sick to feature yesterday. He’s hardly going to be in top shape for a cup semi-final on Tuesday. I don’t mean to say we can get someone in before then, but we need to be working on something asap. This isn’t a case of just wanting something new for the sake of it, it’s an outright necessity because the team badly requires it.

This is the ninth time Arsenal have scored one or none in a Premier League game this season and they’ve dropped points in seven of those matches.

#BHAARS

— Orbinho (@orbinho.bsky.social) January 4, 2025 at 7:33 PM

I think we’ve been really, really unlucky at times this season, but the cold, hard truth is that we lack the firepower to overcome some of that ill-fortune. Some of what has happened is completely out of our control, but what we can control is how we build our squad, and in that sense we’ve been found wanting. If football is a game so often decided by the fine margins, we’ve allowed ourselves to be the wrong side of them too often, and we have to do something about it.

Even if the Premier League might be almost impossible by the end of the day when Liverpool batter Man Utd, we still have two cups and the Champions League to compete for. That’s not nothing, and it’s incumbent on those who make the decisions to give us the best possible chance in those competitions.

Till tomorrow, when we’ll have an Arsecast Extra for you. Have a good Sunday.

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