Unai Emery kept his promise of not resting players ahead of Liverpool and after seeing Tottenham and Liverpool wipe out their opponents today, we really needed a strong team to keep us in the title race. We started quickly and that man Aubameyang nearly put us in front after just 4 minutes, but Matt Ryan pulled of a brilliant tip over the bar.
But Auba was in the mood and just a few minutes later he made no mistake when Laca gave him a great pass in the box. It certainly looked like it was going to be a good day for the Gunners. Brighton looked very tired and on the ropes and they simply couldn’t get hold of the ball from a very comfortable-looking Arsenal side, but they seemed to wake up half-way through the half and were nearly awarded a goal when Murray bundled it over the line out of Leno’s hands but the ref was having none of it.
But Brighton were raring to get an equalizer suddenly, but Auba nearly punished them another two times, but crazily a long ball over the top fails to get cleared by Lichtsteiner and Locadia takes it around Leno, and the Seagulls are back in the game totally against the run of play. Arsenal were shocked not to hold on to a lead yet again and they go into the break with the score at 1-1.
Mesut Ozil had started the game, but hardly had any effect, despite Arsenal having 70% possession so it was no surprise when Iwobi replaced the German at half-time. The Gunners look to have had the fight knocked out of them, and Emery makes another change bringing on Ramsey for Lacazette. The Frenchman was playing well and won’t be happy about that.
But nothing seems to help and we seemed to be strolling around the pitch and letting Brighton hold on to it when they wanted. But there was very little action other than a couple of half-chances for the home side. We didn’t manage another shot on target except for one rebound of Iwobi that nearly trickled past Ryan with just a few minutes to go, but the Gunners would hardly have deserved to get a winner on this performance.