Match Review – Brighton 2-1 Arsenal
Headlines you never thought you’d see:
Arsenal crash at Brighton to pile more pressure on Arsene Wenger
Arsenal plumb new depths with deserved defeat to Brighton
Brighton push Wenger to the brink
Sunday 4th March will forever be remembered as the day Brighton and Hove Albion finally knocked off one of the big six in the Premier League. Seven times we’d attempted it and seven times we’d failed, scoring only the softest penalty imaginable against Liverpool and conceding 18 times along the way.
This was a richly deserved victory and a reward for Chris Hughton sticking with the more positive football we’ve seen since sticking 11 men behind the ball away at Southampton five weeks ago and trying to bore our way to a point.
Arsenal it has to be said were shocking. The kids in the Albion sections with the pathetic, plastic, home made signs asking for Arsenal players shirts should be asking for the likes of Lewis Dunk, Glenn Murray and Jose Izquierdo as they were the real superstars on show.
From front to back, there wasn’t one Arsenal player on that showing who you would take over someone from the Albion’s starting 11, with the possible exception of Jack Wilshere who seemed to be the only man in black who actually cared. Petr Cech played like a bloke who’d retired when he left Chelsea; compare that to Maty Ryan who in the first half turned Henrik Mkhitaryan’s cross around the post and in the second parried a Mesut Ozil shot away at full stretch and saved from Eddie Nketiah.
In defence, Lewis Dunk and Shane Duffy were back in the form that was so impressive in the first few months of the season. They even combined for the first goal, Duffy winning a header from a Pascal Gross corner which Dunk volleyed home to move onto -3 for the season with his first goal of the campaign at the right end.
Compare those two and the full backs Ezqueil Schelotto and Gaetan Bong to Laurent Koscielny and the rest of Arsenal’s cumbersome back four. Koscielny was responsible for the Albion’s second, gifting the ball to Gross who delivered a perfect cross to Glenn Murray. The result anytime Murray gets a sight of goal at the minute is predictable – the ball ends up in the back of the net. It’s eight in 10 now and the #GetGlennOnThePlane campaign rolls on.
If anything showed that Wenger has lost the plot it was that it took him 83 minutes to realise that Izquierdo and Anthony Knockaert are a bit quick and that he might need some of Hector Bellerin’s pace at the back. Prior to that, Arsenal’s only option when it came to stopping us had seemingly been to bring down anything that got into their half or in the case of Sead Kolasinic on Schelotto, actual physical decapitation. How Kolasinic remained on the field given he had already been booked was a mystery – let alone the fact it looked a straight red offence – but in fairness to Stuart Atwell and his linesman, that was the only major decision they got wrong.
If you’d bumped into a Martian on Saturday night in the pub and given them a free ticket to the game with the promise of watching a German World Cup winning creative midfielder, they’d have assumed you meant Pascal Gross and not Ozil. As for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, well he might have prodded home in a goal mouth scramble, but he doesn’t have eight in his last 10 games does he? Let’s hope that Arsenal fan who tweeted “Murray hahahahahahaha” on seeing the Albion starting line up managed to get most of the egg off his face.
At the final whistle, the chant of “We are staying up” chorused around the Amex. And barring an absolutely horrific collapse or going down with a freakishly high points total, we’re nearly there. Two more wins from the final nine games hits the 40 points target and on this showing, we can give anyone in the league a game, especially at home. The visits of Spurs and Manchester United don’t hold as much fear now although admittedly neither of those two will surely be anywhere near as poor as Arsenal.
Top half of the table, FA Cup Quarter Finalists and we’ve not just beaten, but outplayed one of the biggest clubs in the world. This is proving to be quite the season for Brighton and Hove Albion. Long may it continue.
