Arteta impresses even as his Arsenal side stumble on the South Coast

Brighton & Hove Albion (2) 3 v Arsenal (0) 0

Premier League

Matchweek 5

Talking Points

By Kaz Mochlinski at the Amex Community Stadium

There is nothing which Mikel Arteta has done this season that was as impressive as his reaction to Arsenal’s first defeat of the new campaign with a painful 3-0 loss away to Brighton & Hove Albion.

The Arsenal manager’s balanced response - acknowledging mistakes, admitting disappointment, crediting the opposition, and looking ahead to improvement - showed his growing stature after winning the Premier League title last season.

“Extremely disappointed” emphasised Arteta after the match. “But first 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. Winning the first duel, any second ball, that puts you in the game.

“Especially how direct they were. In a really difficult place for us. On top of that, we didn’t really help ourselves, especially in our own half, with the amount of technical errors that we did.

“And we didn’t respect any principles of play that you have to, to get out of that man-to-man situation. So that put us always on 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 for all the other things that you have done wrong.

“So, at the end of the day, I think they deserved to win the game. And it’s a big lesson for us.”

Arsenal had won all their previous seven matches this season, in the Premier League, Champions League, EFL Cup and FA Community Shield, and in some style, while letting in just one goal in the league before conceding three times at Brighton.

Two goals in the later stages of the opening period from long-range strikes, by stand-in captain Pascal Gross and then Charalampos Kostoulas, plus a header from a corner early in the second half by Chema Andrés, sealed the Seagulls’ success.

What Gross is accomplishing at the age of 35 in his second spell on the South Coast is increasingly impressive, with three goals in three games, and four goals in five appearances. Meanwhile, Kostoulas has four goals in six starts this season.

Aged 19 and wearing the number 19 shirt, Kostoulas is widely known as “Babis”, a traditional Greek shortened form of Charalampos, but he is already being nicknamed “Babistuta” due to comparisons with the former Argentine striker Gabriel Batistuta.

Chema Andrés, who scored his first goal for Brighton on his first Premier League start for the club, is also at the opposite end of his career to Gross. The 21-year-old ex-Real Madrid junior’s promise is evident from his nickname of “Baby Rodri”.

Together they left the reigning champions in some very unexpected disarray. At one point in the second half, Arsenal symbolically seemed to be without a captain, as the armband was passed around between players but no one was putting it on.

Martin Ødegaard had started off as the skipper, but when he was substituted then Bukayo Saka took over this time, only to be brought off himself a little later. There were several passages of play prior to Declan Rice finally accepting the armband.

A fair amount of additional confusion came with Rice temporarily taking over at right-back before Martín Zubimendi was sent there in Arsenal’s luxury use of two World Cup winners as substitutes, in Zubimendi and Mikel Merino.

In reality, it was already 3-0 by then and the result was decided beyond all reasonable doubt, with brilliant Brighton consolidating their position as the Premier League’s top scorers, having now reached 16 goals this season.

Albion have also added another seven goals in their UEFA Conference League and Football League Cup matches so far, with 11 different goalscorers contributing to those 23 goals in all competitions.

Moreover, their fine form recently has been achieved despite missing several key players due to injuries, with club captain Lewis Dunk, Jack Hinshelwood, Kaoru Mitoma and Yankuba Minteh all being absent against Arsenal.

Taking on the title-holders was always going to be a big occasion, and it was made more memorable by being Brighton & Hove Albion’s 125th anniversary game, not the most notable landmark but enhanced with commemorative flags and stadium displays.

Most of the celebratory enthusiasm might have been generated by the club’s marketing department, yet Brighton became the first side to wear an anniversary kit in the Premier League since Manchester United and Manchester City back in 2008.

The choice of shirt turned out to be slightly controversial as the blue colour was said to have been copied from an original museum item which probably faded over time and so did not accurately reflect Albion’s first tops. It was a very attractive kit, nevertheless.

And this was a very rare match for which two official programmes were printed by Brighton, an A4 edition and a smaller A5 copy, with the day turning out to be one where it was worth paying extra for the larger version to keep as memento.

Furthermore, thanks to the Seagulls’ slight extension of their stadium capacity over the summer, a new record attendance of 31,944 was set on the South Downs, contributing to a special Saturday afternoon atmosphere.

So much conspired to boost Brighton and against Arsenal that such an outlier result was almost unavoidable. Arteta will hope that it was just a one-off, particularly as this could have been the first time that his best XI started together.

With Jurriën Timber returning from injury and Bruno Guimarães coming in alongside Rice, for their first Premier League starts of the season, plus Ezri Konsa beside Gabriel Magalhães, this line-up may well be seen again in spite of the final score.

If anything, the Gunners might have been lulled into playing too prettily following their favourable recent results and the bitter accusations from Fabian Hürzeler, the Albion head coach, of “winning ugly” when coming away with a 1-0 victory earlier in the year.

Back then Hürzeler suggested that “There was only one team who tried to play football today”. The triumph was crucial in Arsenal’s pursuit of the title, but six months later he savoured a very satisfying revenge.

Hürzeler got his team to try and succeed in the small duels, winning their first tackles, the early throw-ins and corners, etc., with Arteta afterwards agreeing that this was decisive in shaping the outcome.

“There are a lot of moments when the ball is 50/50 and it changes hands, and most of the time it was for them. They opened us up in a really difficult way. That’s something to learn.

“That’s not going to take away what this team has done, and what the boys have done, in the last six or seven weeks since coming back from the World Cup.

Because, with 18 players coming back, the way we’ve competed, and the number of games we have won, has been remarkable. But this is a big lesson on what it takes to win at this level.”