Arsene Wenger had praised Brighton and Hove Albion ahead of Arsenal’s trip to the Amex Stadium last Sunday afternoon an we all know how that ended. The result last night in the Europa League was a welcome victory over a rejuvenated AC Milan side under club legend Gennaro Gattuso.
The Seagulls were promoted to the Premier League for the first time in their history last season after finishing second in the Championship.
Starting the season as relegation favourites, Chris Hughton’s side have defied the critics however and have been one of the season’s biggest surprise packages.
Sitting 12th in the Premier League before their win over the Gunners and having won two of their last three fixtures Sunday’s win sent Brighton into a lofty 10th position only 11 points behind Arsenal.
Arsene Wenger had praised his opponents on Sunday afternoon ahead of the match saying his Arsenal side had be wary of what he described as an “intelligent” Brighton team.
“The fact they play good football,” the Arsenal manager said. “They have a team who play quality [football] collectively. When they had a bad patch during the season, they stayed together and focused and made some surprising results.
“They have worked in a very intelligent way. They fought for many years in the Championship to come up, and a few times just missed that by a very little margin.
“They kept their philosophy, they continued to work in a rational way and, overall now that they’re up there, I believe that they will stay in the league this season and why not? They have the structure to stay for longer.”
Kick off last Sunday afternoon at the Amex Stadium was 13:30pm. on a day Arsenal would like to forget when they went down to a weak 2-1 defeat where the Seagulls were definitely the better team.
The Gunners, however, rebounded from their 3 losses last week in fine form when they beat AC Milan 2-0 at the San Siro on Thursday night as Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Aaron Ramsey scored fine first half goals from Mesut Ozil assists as Arsenal showed that they are still well capable of winning the Europa League.
Jack Wilshere was in superb form last night and is clearly making a late push to make the England plane for Russia this summer so the Champions League may not be out of reach for the Gunners as they have a sweet 2 away goal lead to take into the second leg of the round of 16 Europa League second leg.