A good run must start with a good points which must start with winning all the games they play. It's better to have most of the 3 points now so you can be ahead and draw the rest later instead of repeating what they have done in the last two season. If you remember, people always consider Arsenal to win if they haven't lost some of the matches, they were praying to win the league and Manchester City to lose their second to last match. If they hadn't lose some of their earliest match, it wouldn't have happened.
I agree with you that Arsenal needs to avoid getting to drop any point at this stage of the season. Manchester City recent form or let’s say this season is beyond superb as they are looking to run away with the trophy this early. In the past seasons Manchester city do not play this good at the start of the season rather they get into the mood during the December period but right now they are off to their 5Th, so dropping points now isn’t good for Arsenal most especially when they haven’t even played against the traditional top six teams.
The referee was been biased though, he shouldn't have given additional yellow card to rice, very unprofessional because Brighton were playing offensive game and it's expected of Rice to react that way, you can't give yellow card for foul and give another one instantly because of mere issue, that's very unprofessional and fair to Arsenal as a whole.
The referee was biased but didn’t do a thing wrong on the second yellow to Rice, almost every Arsenal fan understands the Situation. Rice to me was just too childish and lack experience there, he was on a yellow and was supposed to avoid any kind of ball involvement with opposition players, the Brighton player knew what he wanted and Rice didn’t knew and fell right into. The yellow card was deserved because he obviously kicked the ball out of play and that is a yellow card offense. The only thing was that the referee didn’t keep it up in the match if not he would have sent out Joao Pedro for Same thing but he didn’t, that’s where he was biased but the card to Rice was definitely the right call