Manager Mikel Arteta claims Arsenal are in survival mode after he lost another two defenders to injury before overseeing a nervous 2-1 win against Brighton to move back to the top of the Premier League.
Jurrien Timber was ruled out of Saturday’s fixture with an injury sustained on Boxing Day, while Riccardo Calafiori was forced out of the starting line-up with a problem suffered in the warm-up.
Ben White and Cristhian Mosquera were both unavailable, too, as Declan Rice was deployed at the Emirates as an emergency right-back.
Despite their defensive woes, Arsenal appeared in cruise control after Martin Odegaard landed his first goal of the season before Georginio Rutter put through his own net.
However, Diego Gomez struck back on the 64th minute and David Raya was then needed to produce a fine save to allow Arsenal to take the win and pull two points clear of Manchester City.
It marked a third straight game where Arsenal – who have suffered a series of injuries this season – have won by a margin of just one goal and Arteta admitted: “At the moment we have survived six months. There’s another five and a half to go, so hopefully things will get better.
“What I like is that we have a lot of issues and we’re dealing with it in an incredible way. Yesterday we lost Jurrien and today we lost Calafiori in the warm-up.
“You speak to Declan and tell him he needs to play there as a full-back and he said: ‘Okay, I’m up for a challenge, I’m going to do my best.’ And that attitude is great to witness.
“You saw the performance he put in. That’s the spirit and that’s how much our players want it.”
Arsenal had a number of chances to put the game out of Brighton’s reach, but their failure to do so led to an edgy finale.
Arteta, who was able to welcome back key defender Gabriel in the second half after a near two-month absence, continued: “We were a big threat, but the margin should have been much bigger.
“With the amount of situations and open chances that we generated, it should never have been 2-1. But that’s the Premier League.
“The first shot they had, they scored. We all want to win so badly. We should have scored the third one and then it would have been different. We didn’t, so we had to suffer a little bit more.”
Arsenal will be back in action on Tuesday when they take on third-placed Aston Villa at the Emirates.
Brighton have taken just two points from a possible 15 and slipped to 12th in the table.
Frustrated boss Fabian Hurzeler said: “In the first half we didn’t play a good game, but in the second half it was completely the opposite, with a lot of courage and we had chances to make it 2-2. In the end, it was a disappointing result.
“We have to turn our results around and focus on performance. The Premier League is ruthless and we have to make the small margins for 90 minutes.”
