It is funny how much can change in two weeks.
Top-of-the-table Arsenal were the butt of all Premier League jokes for conceding a last-minute equaliser at last-placed Wolverhampton Wanderers two Wednesdays ago. Their players and supporters were furious as the full-time whistle blew that night at a sleet-laden Molineux.
Fast forward to early March and the boom of noise from the Amex Stadium’s away end minutes after their 1-0 win at Brighton & Hove Albion last night told a different story.
“I was walking to our supporters, I saw a reaction and I said, ‘What happened?’,” Mikel Arteta told the media after the game, explaining the moment he found out second-placed Manchester City had drawn 2-2 at home against Nottingham Forest in their match being played at the same time, extending Arsenal’s lead in the title race to seven points.
The travelling support had burst into song when Forest equalised during the second half, but their post-game cheer was even louder than those for Bukayo Saka’s winner or the full-time whistle that confirmed their team’s victory. It brought an end to one of the season’s most bizarre encounters.
Time had passed since that Wolves result, but Arsenal were still the Premier League’s main antagonists.
Brighton head coach Fabian Hurzeler did his best to make Arteta’s side out as pantomime villains before Wednesday’s game by saying “there are no clear rules anymore” about the time they take and the methods they deploy to gain advantages at set pieces.
Instead, he pre-empted something of a tragic comedy for his side to endure.
Hurzeler and the majority of the 31,000 crowd were on high alert for anything that resembled time-wasting from the first whistle as a result of his comments. For what followed in the next 90-plus minutes, we come to that word ‘funny’ again before getting to the grit that secured the three points for Arsenal.
Fabian Hurzeler cut an agitated figure on the touchline (Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)
Arteta’s players were booed within minutes of the first half starting for assessing where to play a throw-in. They did not even have to work to frustrate the home crowd, and played into that for the entire night.
The boos grew louder with each stoppage, but what led to them? The flurry of first-half throw-ins came via Brighton clearing the ball out of play or tackling Arsenal’s wide players. The away side could decide how they dealt with the ensuing restarts and their choices caused Brighton’s frustration to brew.
In one instance, the hosts tried to play a quick free kick, but their taker struck a team-mate with it and the ball bounced back to Arsenal. Exasperated groans followed from three of the four stands, and that pattern continued as Brighton players kept misplacing passes when forcing themselves into quick decisions. Already ahead on the scoreboard from the ninth minute, Arsenal could stand off and allow their opponents to work themselves into a frenzy.
The best example came early in the first half.
With the ball lobbed out of play by one member of his team, Hurzeler ran to retrieve it for an Arsenal player to take the throw-in. The only issue was that nobody in red and white came to accept his gift. Piero Hincapie eventually strolled over, which led to the left-back shushing Hurzeler after more complaints.
Asked whether he and his players enjoyed the hostile atmosphere, Arteta said: “We need to. When you are in the position that we are, obviously they (opponents) want to take that away from you. That’s normal. That’s sport. We need to take that with normality and confront it in the right way.”
In reality, that is one of many things Arsenal ‘needed to do’ to reach this point. They tried to win the Premier League as entertainers in the 2022-23 season, but ran out of steam in the spring. They became more robust with the arrivals of Declan Rice and Kai Havertz for 2023-24, but missed out by two points.
In his post-match press conference last night, Hurzeler said: “I’ll never be the type of manager that tries to win that way.” That is a nice statement, but when a team have been fighting to be crowned the best in the land for four years without success, three points will be taken from a given match in any way possible.
Hurzeler himself went on to say: “If they (Arsenal) win the Premier League, no one will ask how they won.”
Early individual errors from Arteta’s men threatened to mar another Premier League outing early in the first half, but the resolve shown by Gabriel, Rice, Jurrien Timber and Hincapie gave Arsenal something that was missing late on at Wolves: clarity. If a ball was there to be won, one of them would spring forward to do so. There was no confusion or hesitation like that day at Molineux, just action. The number of headed clearances late on was a sight to behold, but the pair of slide tackles from Rice and Hincapie to make up for their own mistakes in the first half were just as important.
For all the talk around Arsenal’s set-piece goals, the winner this time came from open play. The real kicker was that it was one of only two shots they placed on target in the entire game and had an expected goals (xG) figure of 0.01.
Concerns over the style of play will resurface among their own fanbase if matches are as anxiety-inducing as the weekend’s 2-1 win against Chelsea, but for this visit to the south coast, those associated with Arsenal were due a laugh. In a stadium where they had been public enemy No 1, those jovial tones from the away end were particularly important for Arteta, and will continue to be.
“The energy that they brought, the passion, the positivity to the team — it was amazing,” he said of the travelling supporters. “Many moments we thought we were playing very close with them, and that’s very helpful.”
Arteta will not be naive enough to think anything is over yet, though, especially with the contrast in feelings from their previous trip outside of London.
The gap is seven points, but City have a game in hand and momentum can still swing back their way. With just eight league matches to play, he and his players cannot let this moment go to waste. The grind must continue.
