Arsenal: Well, Brighton taught us one thing for certain

Arsenal drew rather disappointedly against Brighton, but at the very least, we learned one clear lesson from the whole ordeal, and it’s about the formation.

Arsenal started out their match-up with Brighton on fire. The 4-3-1-2 formation seemed to play right into the strengths of the attack, allowing Mesut Ozil to be the centerpiece and Aubameyang and Lacazette to play off one another.

That worked for about a half hour. Aubameyang might well have notched a hat trick in that half hour, but he didn’t. He knocked home one of his chances, the other two required some crazy saves to keep him out and, in the end, would prove to be detrimental to the match itself.

That was when Brighton turned up the heat. They put the press on the Gunners and they were unable to break it. They could barely string three passes together and Unai Emery’s response was to remove an invisible Ozil and bring on Iwobi.

But that didn’t change anything. The Gunners were still unable to break the press and Brighton continued to gain momentum, looking by far the superior side.

It wasn’t until Ainsley Maitland-Niles came on in the 69th minute, with Xhaka shifting back to the left-sided centerback, that Emery reverted to the 3-4-3 formation and just like that, like a flip of the switch, the press was broken by the incredibly athletic wingbacks, who utilized the width that the Gunners simply don’t have in any other circumstance.

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It became clear, yet again, that there is only one formation that is working time and again with this club, and it is the three at the back, with two athletic wingbacks.

And why is that?

Because of the width. A team can pass as beautifully as they like, but in tight spaces, there are only so many places you can go.

Using the entire width of the pitch has a knack for opening up things that you just don’t have when crammed into a tight corridor as was the case after that initial burst of inspiration kicked off at the start of the match.

Which just goes to show how vitally important it is to maintain useful, athletic wingbacks like Kolasinac, Maitland-Niles and Hector Bellerin.

Otherwise we would just be crammed into an alleyway for all of eternity, waiting for Ozil to string together some whimsical play and crack open the door enough to his strikers to slam the ball home in the end.