The 3-2 victory over Brighton at the Amex Stadium Saturday wasn't a vintage Arsenal performance. However, there were encouraging signs that the Gunners look desperate to do well in this season's FA Cup. With the Premier League now only about making the top four and with a difficult tie against Bayern Munich in the Champions League, it's great to see Arsenal are not taking the FA Cup lightly.

In previous seasons, when Arsenal have rotated their squad, as they did Saturday, they lost some of the intensity you need in cup matches against lower-league teams, for whom the match means an awful lot. Indeed, in the Capital One Cup, Arsene Wenger took Bradford seriously in terms of team selection, but the side lacked the spark and desire needed in such matches.

It's easy to look at the performance from Arsenal, highlight the negatives and say, 'Oh but it was only Brighton'. To a certain degree, that does ring true. It is concerning to see Arsenal's defence unlocked fairly easy by a Championship side. However you only need to look at how other Premier League sides in the fourth round were put under pressure by lower-league team to see that a win in these games is never a given.

Everton needed a late winner to beat Bolton, Norwich were beaten by a team from the fifth tier of the English football pyramid and Brentford really went for it against Chelsea Sunday. At this stage of the competition, you just have to get through, and to do that Arsenal had to match Brighton in terms of intensity, and the team stepped up and did it on Saturday.

All Arsenal fans know how painful the defeat to Bradford was. But there were signs against Brighton that the squad learned from that match. There wasn’t complacency on show on Saturday and Arsenal looked ready to work hard to make it through to the fifth round. Arguably, the pressure of the knockout cup situation suits this Arsenal team more as they have shown at times that they can be at their best in one-off games. As shown by this stat via @OptaJoe on Twitter, Arsenal can’t be criticised for giving up in the cup competitions this season.

They were undoubtedly helped by the impressive performance from Olivier Giroud, who showed he can produce when under pressure. With four goals in two matches this week, the Frenchman's confidence is growing going into some important league games.

Arsenal still can't rely on him to be one of two main strikers for the rest of the season because the way he uses his physical side of the game can mean he takes a lot of bumps and risks injury. For one of the few times in the January window, Wenger hinted at being interested in signing a striker by saying “number-wise, we could be a bit short maybe.” Given what he's said in recent weeks, I’ll take that as an encouraging sign that all isn’t completely lost in terms of improving the squad. Better late than never with less than five days to go in the January transfer window.

The challenge in the next round for Arsenal is to not let that cup intensity drop, whether they’re playing Manchester United, Luton Town or anyone in between. All too often, Arsenal have made it to the fourth and fifth round before making it seem as if they’ve thrown the competition away to focus on the league. While it obviously is a priority to make the top four, Wenger can’t afford to let the FA Cup slip this season.

It could have slipped away when 1-0 down at Swansea, when drawing 0-0 late on in that replay and after being pegged back twice against Brighton. Arsenal made sure they did enough to stay in the Cup. Long may it continue.

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