Arteta cut a frustrated figure in the post-match conference after watching Arsenal hold on for a point at Brighton, and he wasn’t very happy with the teams ability to take control from the Seagulls and try and get into scoring positions.
But the fact is that our defence managed their third clean sheet in the last four games, so they deserved some praise for keeping out a very persistent Brighton forward line. He was asked if our improvement defensively was due to Aaron Ramsdale taking over between the sticks. “I don’t know.” he told Arsenal.com. “The way we decided to recruit Aaron was [after] going through a big process where we wanted to know a lot about his personality, his character, the way he can handle playing under pressure at a big club.
“He is showing he is ready to do that and I’m really happy with his performances and what he is bringing. That’s one of the reasons I think defensively we have been really difficult to concede goals.
That same run of clean sheets came about with the partnership of Ben White and Gabriel in front of Ramsdale as well, and Arteta could only praise the new partnership. “Yeah [I’m impressed] because they’ve never played together and because they have struggled a little bit with the language and they didn’t have any time to work together in pre-season either. They’re getting a really good connection, good chemistry, and I think their qualities match and complement each other really, really well. I think both of them today were terrific.”
I know that Arsenal fans will be severely disappointed by yesterday’s performance by the team as a whole, but it looks like Arteta has found the correct pieces for his defensive iogsaw, and as a favourite football saying goes “If you don’t concede, you have more chance of winning”.
That seems to be Arsenal’s mantra at the moment…