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Mikel Arteta admits Arsenal ‘had to suffer’ in nervy win over Brighton #Mikel #Arteta #admits #Arsenal #suffer #nervy #win #Brighton

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Jurrien Timber was ruled out of Saturday’s game due to an injury sustained on Boxing Day, while Riccardo Calafiori was forced out of the starting XI due to an issue suffered during the warm-up.

Ben White and Cristhian Mosquera were also unavailable, as Declan Rice was deployed to the Emirates as an emergency right-back.

Despite their defensive woes, Arsenal appeared in cruise control after Martin Odegaard scored his first goal of the season before Georginio Rutter put in his own net.

However, Diego Gomez hit back in the 64th minute and David Raya then had to make a fine save to earn Arsenal the victory and move two points clear of Manchester City.

It was the third game in a row where Arsenal – who have suffered a series of injuries this season – won by just one goal and Arteta admitted: “At the moment we have survived six months. There are still five and a half to go, so hopefully things will improve.

“What I like is that we have a lot of problems and we are handling them in an incredible way. Yesterday we lost Jurrien and today we lost Calafiori in the warm-up.

“You talk to Declan and tell him he has to play there as a full-back and he said, ‘Okay, I’m up for a challenge, I’ll give it my best.’ And this attitude is great to see.

“You saw the performance he put in. That’s the spirit and that’s how much our players want it.”

Arsenal had several chances to put the game out of Brighton’s reach, but their failure led to a nail-biting finale.

Arteta, who was able to welcome back key defender Gabriel in the second half after almost two months out, continued: “We were a big threat, but the margin should have been much bigger.

Martin Odegaard celebrates his goal for Arsenal
Martin Odegaard scored his first goal of the season (Bradley Collyer/PA)

“With the number of open situations and chances we generated, it should never have been 2-1. But that’s the Premier League.

“The first shot they took, they scored. We all want to win so bad. We should have scored the third one and it would have been different. We didn’t, so we had to suffer a little more.”

Arsenal will be back in action on Tuesday when they take on third-placed Aston Villa at the Emirates.

Brighton took just two points from a possible 15 and slipped to 12th in the table.

Frustrated coach Fabian Hurzeler said: “In the first half we didn’t play a good game, but in the second half it was quite the opposite, with a lot of courage and we had chances to make it 2-2. In the end it was a disappointing result.

“We need to turn our results around and focus on performance. The Premier League is unforgiving and we need to take small margins for 90 minutes.”





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