Sunderland 0-2 Arsenal: Character Gets Us Through a Tough Away Day

For any team, it would be really difficult to play an away Premier League game after a tough Champions League fixture on the road. Arsenal are no exception, especially considering our history with this kind of combination. So, anyone expecting another dominant performance was in for a disappointment.

Besides the expected changes to the starting XI, it was really good to see Timber back on the bench after missing a big chunk of last season, the World Cup and the start of this season.

Remembering this fixture from last season, I didn’t expect anything less than Sunderland being extremely physical and aggressive right from the beginning. Their red and white striped shirts and Danso’s long throws brought up painful memories of us trying to ‘do it in Stoke on a rainy weekday’.

I’m sure that team would have crumbled under such pressure, but the current Arsenal team is a completely different animal. Sunderland had to get help from elsewhere just to have an opportunity to score.

And little did they know that such help would come from the referee, who was played by Ballard like a fiddle and pointed to the spot after he pulled Konsa over and made it look like our centre-back had violated the newly introduced ‘no hugging’ rule in the penalty box during set-pieces.

The more I see the incident, the more convinced I become that PGMOL knew they had to make an example of someone - and they probably knew from the start that Arsenal would be the perfect target. When it comes to us, they seem perfectly happy to apply the rules in the most ridiculous way imaginable. Remember Martinelli’s double red in one passage of play? How many similar decisions have we seen since then? Exactly zero.

Credit to the Arsenal team for not breaking under the circumstances. Instead of going 1-0 down, we went 1-0 up as Guimarães put a stunning shot into the net from outside the box, just over two minutes after Raya made that excellent save from Le Fée’s spot kick.

We could have gone 2-0 up, but Ballard kept the ball out after Havertz’s header. Dan Ballard, a former Arsenal academy graduate, has now played against us for the second season in a row as if it were his last ever football game. At some point, I wanted to shout at the TV: “Can you chill a bit?!”

The same applies to Xhaka, who, as we know, never misses an opportunity to cause a controversy and dive into a heated conversation with an opponent. This time was no different - he was too upset with Konsa defending Guimarães after he was kicked. Granit immediately got involved, even though there wasn’t much at stake. More of the same when City, United or Chelsea visits please.

Sunderland clearly felt the referee was being lenient when it came to them walking the line with their physicality, and they got a little too careless with it, which eventually led to Reinaldo fouling Saka in their box. It really was unnecessary and avoidable, but it all resulted in Saka taking a not-too-convincing but still good enough penalty to finally end the home side’s agony.

After the game, Mikel was furious and didn’t hold back in his post-match interview. I haven’t seen him this angry since Newcastle away, when Joelinton pushed Gabriel into the ground before Gordon scored that controversial winner.

Tremendous three points, whichever way you look at the game and the circumstances. And now there are only two games left in this crazy run of four away games in a row: Ipswich in the League Cup next, and then Brighton in the Premier League.

With the form we’re in, it’s a shame we have to stop and let the international break bring the first interruption of the season. Sometimes it comes in handy, but not this time.