Arsenal vs Brighton - Player Rating and Match Reaction

[Mac76]

I think a lot of these debates per say come down to us not having a strong enough squad. I am not suggesting that if we kept our starting XI fit all season we would have won the league, but right now the system and the performance level is reliant on pretty much our core starting XI being fit. As we have seen over the past few months and especially yesterday, our performance levels drop off a cliff when we have core players missing. MO touched on it earlier but our defensive record at home or more importantly recently has been actually really bad, we are conceeding 2 or 3 goals on average in a lot of games.

We have run out of steam and we are clearly not quite good enough when it comes to mounting a challenge on City to the final day.

This summer is going to be really crucial in terms of recruitment, we need to get it right and we need to purchasing players who are capable of slotting straight into the First XI without an obvious performance drop, this summer is not about finding gems, it's about finding quality players who are ready to contribute right now to a CL and PL challenging team, that's the standard we need to aspire to.

Obviously other factors come into play such as Arteta and the coaching staff and even the players within the club continuing to develop / improve, but we need to get the basics right first otherwise next season may not be anywhere near as enjoyable as this season.

That last point is of concern to me - I'll keep an open mind but there's a potential version of next season that could be a bit grim, where Arteta fails to learn any lessons on squad rotation, teams and tactics, we lose some useful good players like Tierney, Balogun and Nelson but don't recruit sufficiently, other teams get stronger and we have an unkind early fixture list (which as we know, with the exception of this season, is pretty much the norm) - it could be a Chelsea-like season if we're not careful

think of the opposition now, it's no longer a big six but a big seven or eight - us, Citeh, Man Ure, Chelsea, Newcastle, Liverpool, Brighton, possibly Villa and possibly even Spuds if they themselves don't implode as much as I'm hoping...