{"id":658997,"date":"2025-12-28T03:24:34","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T03:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/658997\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T03:24:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T03:24:34","slug":"arsenal-2-1-brighton-david-raya-save-keeps-gunners-top-of-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/658997\/","title":{"rendered":"Arsenal 2-1 Brighton: David Raya save keeps Gunners top of table"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arsenal<\/a>‘s victory over Brighton<\/a> felt like a match that had been played multiple times already this season. <\/p>\n

The Gunners dominated play, missed chances and had to deal with injuries to key players – something that has tested their squad since the opening match of the campaign, with forward Kai Havertz missing with a knee injury since then. <\/p>\n

On Saturday, Arsenal<\/a> were without the injured Jurrien Timber and lost Riccardo Calafiori in the warm-up, meaning left-back Myles Lewis-Skelly stepped into the starting line-up at short notice. <\/p>\n

There was some good news, with centre-back Gabriel returning as a second-half substitute following his injury lay-off.<\/p>\n

Arteta said his side have been “surviving” the challenges thrown at them for six months and the injuries to key players are “uniting” the squad.<\/p>\n

“At the moment we survived six months, so let’s see, there’s another five and a half to go, so hopefully things will get better,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The good news as well, we’ve got Gabi [Gabriel] earlier than expected, which is great.”<\/p>\n

This is the second week in a row where Manchester City<\/a> have played before Arsenal<\/a> and gone top of the Premier League, with the Gunners having to respond.<\/p>\n

But Arteta says his squad are relishing the challenge they face as they try to win the Premier League for the first time since 2004. <\/p>\n

“We can only control what we do. We’re doing a lot of good things that I think that we have to improve as well,” he said, adding that playing “every three days is going to be a challenge and we are up for it”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arsenal‘s victory over Brighton felt like a match that had been played multiple times already this season. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-658997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115795057861734263","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}