Arsenal’s push for a Champions League place is at risk of falling apart after their meeting with Brighton brought their second defeat in a week. With injuries to key players upsetting the balance of Mikel Arteta’s team, the Spaniard must now find urgent solutions to three major problems:

Replacing Kieran Tierney at left-back

Priority number one for Arteta must be the left-back position. He chose against using back-up left-back Nuno Tavares on Saturday, which was a damning indictment of the 22-year-old as it meant that Granit Xhaka, a central midfield player, was deployed in the defence instead.

Xhaka played at left-back a few times last season and it was widely accepted that Arsenal needed to prevent that from ever happening again. Hence the arrival of Tavares from Benfica this summer, in a deal worth around £8 million.

Clearly, Arteta did not like what he saw from Tavares in his last two starts. Against Nottingham Forest in January, he was substituted after 35 minutes. Against Crystal Palace last week, he lasted only 45 minutes. Now, Arteta has shown that he would rather play Xhaka as a left-back instead of him.

The experiment failed on Saturday, not least when Brighton scored their opening goal, through Leandro Trossard, after Enock Mwepu had charged into the open space on the left side of Arsenal’s defence.

It seems clear, after this damaging loss, that Tavares will have to come back into the team. But what state of mind must he be in now? How low must his confidence be, having been hooked twice and then dropped in favour of someone who does not even play in that position? The next few days will be a test of Arteta’s man-management skills as much as his tactical brain.

Rediscovering the midfield balance

The secondary problem with moving Xhaka into the defence was that it took him out of midfield, where he has played impressively in recent months. The knock-on effect was that young Albert Sambi Lokonga was largely alone in the heart of the pitch, and he looked in desperate need of support for much of the game.

Not for the first time this season, Arteta asked Martin Odegaard and Emile Smith Rowe to play on either side of a midfield three. It is not a natural position for either player, and they once again struggled to make it work.

Lokonga was tasked with playing the same deep-lying role in which Thomas Partey has thrived in 2022, and it was a tough ask for the 22-year-old against a powerful Brighton midfield. The Belgian has barely played in recent months and he looked unsure of himself for much of the game.