At Brighton's stadium, Arsenal had a hard-fought 1-0 victory thanks to a goal from Bukayo Saka. At the same time, Man City drew 2-2 against Nottingham Forest despite taking the lead twice. The result helped widen the lead gap to seven points compared to Man City, and the Gunners only have eight more matches left.
According to the supercomputer Opta's assessment, the latest result has created a turning point in the Premier League title race this season. Arsenal, although playing 1 more match than Man City, according to calculations, they have up to 92.8% chance of winning the championship. Meanwhile, Pep Guardiola's team only has 7% chance of winning the championship.
The last time Arsenal won the Premier League was in the unbeaten 2003-2004 season. In recent seasons, they have been bright candidates to compete for the highest position. However, they often run out of steam in the final stage and watch Man City and Liverpool win the championship.
But this season Arsenal is facing a very big opportunity. In the match against Brighton, they did not play too well but still won. Statistics show that the Gunners only had seven shots in the match against Brighton, only slightly better than the match against Chelsea in the recent League Cup (5 shots).
Arsenal's total expected goals in this match are only 0.43 - their lowest number in a match in all competitions in the 2025-2026 season.
Arsenal only made 70.9% of their passes in the match against Brighton, their lowest rate in a Premier League match since August 2021 against Man City (67.6%).
The tight defensive style, even somewhat tricky when Arsenal players continuously lay on the field, caused Brighton coach Fabian Hurzeler to harshly criticize the opponent in a tense press conference after the match.
He said: "We could even have created more chances, but overall, as you said, in the end we lost, so we were all disappointed with this performance.
I am very satisfied with the efforts of the boys, I like the way they play football. I think today there is only one team that really tries to play football and so I am proud of how they did it.
I just want to ask one question, did you see any goalkeeper fall three times in the Premier League match? No? So I think we shouldn't waste words on that tonight.
We should focus on ourselves, focus on the effectiveness of the competition. We cannot control things like this.
So, I think the Premier League has to find rules and that's not my business. I stated my point of view before the match and I still maintain that point of view.
