Arsenal reclaimed first place in the Premier League after a hard-fought 2-1 victory over Brighton & Hove Albion at the Emirates Stadium. Martin \u00d8degaard opened the scoring in the 14th minute with a composed finish after a Bukayo Saka assist. Seven minutes after the restart Georginio Rutter turned Declan Rice\u2019s corner into his own net to double the lead.<\/p>\n
Brighton fought back when Diego G\u00f3mez reacted quickest to a rebound after Yasin Ayari struck the post, reducing the deficit and setting up a tense finale. Arsenal had conceded opportunities late on and required a world class save from David Raya to preserve the lead.<\/p>\n
Arsenal coped with pre-match injury disruption and a late change to the full-back positions, Lewis-Skelly starting after Riccardo Calafiori\u2019s warm-up withdrawal and Rice moving to right-back to cover Jurri\u00ebn Timber\u2019s absence. The home side dominated much of the first half, registering 15 attempts and five on target by half-time while Brighton\u2019s first-half xG was reported as 0.00.<\/p>\n
Player ratings (out of 10)
\nGK: David Raya \u2014 7.8
\nRB: Declan Rice \u2014 7.2
\nCB: William Saliba \u2014 6.9
\nCB: Piero Hincapi\u00e9 \u2014 7.1
\nLB: Myles Lewis-Skelly \u2014 6.2
\nCM: Mikel Merino \u2014 7.0
\nCM: Mart\u00edn Zubimendi \u2014 7.4
\nCM: Martin \u00d8degaard (c) \u2014 8.6
\nRW: Bukayo Saka \u2014 8.6
\nST: Viktor Gy\u00f6keres \u2014 6.5
\nLW: Leandro Trossard \u2014 7.8<\/p>\n
Substitutes who featured: Gabriel (71\u2019 for Lewis-Skelly) 6.3; Gabriel Jesus (71\u2019 for Gy\u00f6keres) 5.8; Gabriel Martinelli (82\u2019 for Trossard) N\/A. Unused subs included Kepa Arrizabalaga, Marli Salmon, Christian N\u00f8rgaard, Eberechi Eze, Ethan Nwaneri and Noni Madueke.<\/p>\n
Brighton started with Bart Verbruggen in goal and a 3-4-2-1 formation. Subs used for the visitors included Yankuba Minteh, Mats Wieffer and Danny Welbeck. The final whistle brought relief for Arsenal after a late spell of pressure from the visitors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Martin \u00d8degaard\u2019s opener and a Rutter own goal helped Arsenal edge Brighton 2-1 in a nervy Emirates win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5428,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172],"tags":[1162,1305,826],"class_list":["post-5429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-bench-selection","tag-bukayo-saka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}