Arsenal FC still leads the Premier League ahead of the top match against the team of the moment. This was mainly thanks to a memorable flying save on Saturday.
It was the 77th minute in a packed Emirates Stadium. Brighton were putting the favorites under pressure when substitute Yankuba Minteh got a shot away from the right side of the box. Coach Fabian Hürzeler may have already seen the attacker’s curling shot in the back of the net, but Arsenal keeper David Raya pulled off a special save with his fingertips to prevent the goal.
Arsenal held on to their narrow 2-1 home win and successfully repelled Manchester City’s next attack. “It was sensational,” coach Mikel Arteta said of Raya’s feat afterwards on Sky Sports, raving: “I had a great angle on the scene. That’s what we need from our players. We need this kind of performance at key moments.“
To finally become champions again in the end. Then people might also talk about Raya’s save, which TV expert Alan Shearer praised as ”one of the best you’ll see this season.”
Arsenal would have been very annoyed to drop points, though. After all, the Gunners had dominated large parts of the game and recorded a total of 15 shots on goal. Brighton’s first shot on Raya’s goal came after the break.
In “survival mode” for six months
Arteta was therefore frustrated with the narrow lead, which “should have been much bigger.” “That was much more difficult for Arsenal than it should have been,” Shearer agreed. A double substitution at half-time by Hürzeler, which Arteta had praised in advance, changed the dynamics of the game.
But Arsenal managed to overcome this challenge as well. For six months now, the Londoners have been in “survival mode” due to ongoing injury concerns, but this has only served to “weld them together” even more, as Arteta emphasized. Arteta is dismissing Manchester City’s ongoing pressure: “We can only control what we do. We are doing a lot of good things, which I think we also need to improve on.“ Preferably by Tuesday, when Aston Villa, the team of the moment, comes to the Emirates. Birmingham’s eleven consecutive competitive wins make Arsenal’s five look almost ”meager.”