Partey previews Sunday's meeting with Brighton

Thomas Partey has urged his teammates to focus on their usual style of football to help them see off the challenge of Brighton & Hove Albion and keep our title chances alive.

The Seagulls have been one of the most impressive outfits in the Premier League this season and are aiming to clinch European qualification next season for the first time in their history.

However they head to north London reeling from a surprise 5-1 defeat to Everton on Monday, with boss Roberto De Zerbi stating post-match that ‘the true Brighton’ will be on show at Emirates Stadium. Thomas is anticipating a reaction from our opponents, but wants us to stick to our usual style of play.

“When a team has that mentality I think it’s hard to stop them,” he said. “But I believe in our qualities and I believe in every player. When you win games, you have a better chance of winning the next one because your confidence level is high, so we have to try and be ourselves and try and play the Arsenal way. Whenever we do that, we are able to beat any team.

“You can see [Brighton] play good football and their mentality is strong. They never give up. I think it will be a very difficult game because they want to keep the ball, and we want to keep the ball so we have to be good at doing that and stronger in recovering the ball and keeping it.

“Any team that likes to dominate play has their own weaknesses. You’ll have to see after the game how we will try to hurt them but we are training a lot on that. Every team that is good have their weaknesses but we will try and explore that, play as we know how to play and we’ll be able to beat them.”

The Ghanaian international has seen his spot in midfield taken by Jorginho for the wins against Chelsea and Newcastle United, but he is refusing to be downhearted by the situation as he feels that if we’re going to push Manchester City all the way, rotation is necessary to keep everyone at their sharpest.

With just three games of the campaign left, he knows now is the time for the squad to remain united as we attempt to win all of the remaining matches to give us the best possible chance of getting our hands on the silverware.

“The competition is very good as anytime you don’t do well, someone can take your place,” he added. “It pushes every player to be on top, so I think you have more chance of getting the best out of every player with rotation, and I believe it’s part of the game. We have to stick together and put our minds on one objective.  

“In football, you have to always be ready to be at the top and I think the mentality of this squad is that we have to try and finish as high as possible. We have to get better and push ourselves to get the best out of each other as that will make the team stronger, and keep fighting for everything that we want.”