Arteta’s eight-word explanation damns awful Arsenal as Hurzeler gets his revenge

· Football365

The last time Arsenal lost by three goals, Mikel Arteta said that ‘any team in this league can punish you’; Brighton most certainly did.

Arsenal do have some experience in the field. For three years and four months, Brighton had reigned as the last team to beat the Gunners by three goals or more. It was so long ago that Roberto De Zerbi was in charge and seemed like a competent coach capable of winning a Premier League game.

Brighton supporters did take to asking whether Arsenal were the Italian’s former club in disguise here, but it wasn’t exactly as a compliment.

This brilliant, relentless, deserved 3-0 thrashing only buttressed that Brighton boast. They flattened the champions, forcing the worst Arsenal performance in recent memory and insisting it fester for three international break weeks.

Mikel Arteta does at least have that title-crushing precedent from May 2023 to work with. Back then he sought only to “apologise to our people”, “to digest the result and the performance, understand why and have a different reaction”, and “to move on very quickly”.

That interminable wait until hosting Leeds on October 10 makes the final point almost impossible. But the rest stands to reason: acknowledge and apportion the considerable fault, appreciate the myriad things that went wrong, and use that pain in the present to ensure they are not repeated in the future.

The fact Arsenal went so long without tasting such a bitter battering again bodes well, but it is contingent on those lessons being learned and put into practice.

Therein lies another problem Arteta touched on back then: “Any team in this league can punish you.”

Three years on, the Premier League has only become more absurdly competitive, ludicrously demanding and intensely physical. The floor has never been higher, and Brighton epitomise the preposterous standard of those consistently pushing to shatter the glass ceiling.

Arsenal survived a similarly mammoth obstacle in Sunderland away, but not this.

It should be noted that Brighton were phenomenal. A brave gameplan from Fabian Hurzeler was enacted flawlessly by his players, who pushed Arsenal suffocatingly high and in great numbers.

This technically showcased the blueprint which can be used to beat the Gunners, but the reality is that the coaches implementing it and the players carrying it out must do so at the same sort of rarefied level as this phenomenal Brighton side.

It requires the sort of defensive imperviousness epitomised by Luka Vuskovic. The limitless energy of Yasin Ayari and Maxim De Cuyper. The composure, stature and intelligence of Chema Andres. The fearlessness of Charalampos Kostoulas.

A prickly Hurzeler complained that “there was only one team who tried to play football today” when Arsenal last visited the Amex; this time around it seemed like only one team was actually capable of it. Any time the Gunners attempted it, Brighton overpowered them.

And stitching it all together was the only starting Brighton survivor from that end-of-season pasting handed out to Arsenal before. The exceptional Pascal Gross is one of the most underrated players of his generation.

He opened the scoring with a fine strike from outside the area as Arsenal backed off. But the second goal encapsulated the difference between these two sides: Arteta’s side were atrocious in transition, and conceded within seconds of Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka wasting a three-on-two counter-attack.

Bart Verbruggen saved comfortably, the ball was shifted forwards quickly to Diego Gomez on the halfway line, the Paraguayan carried it unopposed for 40 or so yards, and Kostoulas hammered his finish into the bottom corner.

Arteta said that “from the first throw-in you could sense” Brighton “had another bite” and thus Arsenal might be in trouble. His and the team’s failure to reverse that across the course of 90 minutes is damning but can happen when levels and standards are not met.

He will hope that this “big lesson” can be taken onboard as effectively as the last, because this was as bad a display under his watch as any.

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