Arsenal's suffered a notable setback to their hopes of Champions League qualification as Brighton & Hove Albion inflicted a home defeat on the Gunners on Saturday.
The setback came just days after Mikel Arteta’s side were humbled in a three-goal defeat against Crystal Palace and completes a miserable week for the team. Back-to-back losses against sides in the bottom half of the standings have left series question marks over the team’s ability to finish the season in the top four.
While that may not have been the club’s objective at the start of the season, the collapse of Manchester United ’s results this campaign had swung open the door – with Tottenham, West Ham and Wolves all in the running. With Arsenal not having any European competition this season – having finished a disappointing eighth in successive seasons under Arteta – and also out of domestic cup trophies, there was hope that they could close out a top four standing.
But now the Gunners have lost three of their last four matches and have managed to find the net just twice in that run of games. It is an alarming time to endure a slump in form and their campaign is now at risk of petering out in disappointing finish with a challenging final eight matches of the season still to play.
These struggles were recently predicted by Ian Wright, who warned that the Gunners had a limited attacking style that could be found out by opposition sides. He praised the form of Martin Odegaard, Emile Smith-Rowe, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli but noticed a pattern in Arteta’s side’s way of attacking, that could be thwarted by opposing teams.
Wright said, speaking to CBS Sport last month: " The only thing that worries me is if those guys stop scoring where's the goals coming from? People are going to soon identify that if we can stop the runners, stop [the inside forwards] coming inside then [Arsenal are] going to have a problem because they haven't got many goals from other places.
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"That's the thing with Lacazette. You just want him to nick a couple more goals. We need our striker to get at least 10-12 Premier League goals. We need that from someone. As great as he is doing with the link-up play, we need more goals from him."
Arsenal have been leapfrogged by Spurs in the top four race in a battle that could go down to the wire, with West Ham, Man United and Wolves all still with outside hopes of pushing into the final Champions League qualification spot. If Arsenal fail to make it by the end of the campaign, this week will be looked back upon with plenty of regret.
