Arsenal continued there 100% start to the Premier League season with a fantastic battling win away at Sunderland under the lights on Saturday evening, courtesy of a wonder strike from Bruno Guimaraes and a Bukayo Saka penalty, deep into stoppage time. It was a real time performance from back to front, with Arsenal displaying their ability to grind out a result once again, but the result itself owes a great debt to the gloves of David Raya, who saved an Enzo Le Fee penalty, just minutes before Arsenal opened the scoring in a really key moment of the match.
The lineup
The first eleven was relatively predictable again, as all the players who were rotated out for the Napoli game returned to the starting lineup to make the team unchanged from the previous week against Chelsea. There was one notable change to the travelling party though as Jurrien Timber appeared on the bench for the first time this season, with Max Dowman dropping out to get some minutes under his belt for the U21s.
The match
It was your typical battle in the North East for large parts of the game, with Sunderland making it difficult for Arsenal to find rhythm and space and on the odd occasion that Arsenal were able to fashion something, their profligacy in front of goal let them down once again. Kai Havertz should have done better on a couple of occasions when well placed and Bukayo Saka (worryingly again!) was also guilty of poor finishing.
At the other end, Bryan Brobbey was causing no end of trouble for Ezri Konsa, but Sunderland still were not really able to fashion many clear cut chances, at least not from open play, as their main threat came from set pieces.
Into the second half and the game’s first main talking point occurred around 55 minutes as a bit of grappling between Konsa and Dan Ballard while waiting for a long throw was deemed to be enough to award Sunderland a penalty. At first sighting I thought this was a penalty. The new rules were always going to be that bit more strict in the first few weeks of the season and Konsa’s arms were all over Ballard, so I thought penalty. After the game, I was surprised to hear Martin Keown completely disagreeing with the decision and wondered if his Arsenal bias was rearing its head again, but after also hearing Mikel Arteta’s rather strong views on the incident after the game, I have changed my mind. Ballard has been very clever and pretty much dragged Konsa on top of him, which looks like a penalty, but in fact is probably a free kick the other way. If only we had some sort of technology where we could go back and review decisions like this to make sure clear errors are reversed…
In the end, it mattered little as the club legend in the making, David Raya, went full stretch to tip Le Fee’s penalty onto the post to keep the scores level and the good news for Arsenal fans, was about to get even better.
Within two minutes of David Raya’s penalty save, Arsenal had gone up the other end of the pitch and opened the scoring – in spectacular fashion! Some neat interplay around the box, led to the ball finding its way to the feet of Declan Rice a few yards outside the Sunderland box. I was immediately calling for Rice to have a go, but the midfielder had other ideas and laid the ball square to half time substitute Bruno Guimaraes who said thank you very much and lashed a first time shot into the top corner, via the crossbar to send the Arsenal fans absolutely wild.
It was a goal worth of winning any game and Bruno certainly knew it, as he reveled in the moment after taking flack all game for his time at Newcastle. 1-0 to The Arsenal!
There wasn’t much of a response from Sunderland although they did push plenty of players forward, which led to decent chances on the break for Arsenal, which again were passed up with Bukayo Saka, again, the most guilty player to leave the game on a wire into the latter stages.
At this point the Sunderland onslaught did arrive and Arsenal were indebted to Raya once again as he made a few impressive saves to keep the Black Cats out, while the Arsenal defensive line also showed their heroic nature at times, throwing their bodies and heads in front of anything that came close to the Arsenal box. The whole while I was just hoping for the ‘relief’ goal to come in and make the game safe as the dropped points from last season were undoubtedly on everyone’s minds as the clocked ticked on, but we weren’t able to kill the game off until deep into stoppage time, so it was another stressful (but ultimately successful!) watch.
Bukayo Saka was played in by a sumptuous through ball from Bruno Guimaraes and was consequenrly brought down by Reinaldo who received a second yellow card while Arsenal received a penalty. Seemed like a fair trade to me! Saka did just about enough from the spot, as Roefs got a big hand to the spot kick, but thankfully couldn’t keep it out, as Arsenal finally made the points save with the all important second goal.
Three things that made me smile
1. Seeing Jurrien Timber back – I’d forgotten how good this guy is! He’s played about an hour of football in around 6 months and it looked like he’d never been away. So aggressive in his duels, progressive in his passes, never seems to be under any pressure…what a player!
2. Realising that we have a goalkeeper who doesn’t crumble under pressure – for years I watched Arsenal struggle to cope with the likes of Bolton, Blackburn, Stoke etc. and deal with all of the ‘Arsenal are softies’ narrative, so I can’t describe how good it feels to have a keeper like David Raya. The penalty save was legendary, but it’s the commanding of his box that never ceases to amaze me. The one where he managed to push the ball to safety while four Sunderland players went flying into him was the perfect demonstration for what he gives this team.
3. THAT goal – I know it’s another obvious one, but how could you not smile after a goal like that. Everything about it, made me smile. What a finish, what a moment for Bruno personally, what a time to get it, what a player we have in Guimaraes, what a result that was…just everything! Big moment.
Any concerns?
A couple. As much as I loved the sight of Jurrien Timber being back, I really didn’t like the sight of Ben White limping off holding his groin. What is it with these two?!? Why can’t we have them both fit at the same time!! We’ve got two games left until a three week break, so hopefully that gives White plenty of time to recover.
Bukayo Saka’s finishing is becoming a real concern. He stuck away his two ‘tap-ins’ against Coventry and Villa no problem, so he knows where the goal is, but his finishing of one on one chances, or even from cutbacks, is pretty shocking right now and I’m not used to saying that about Saka. Even if you got back to his appearence in the Community Shield, he passed up two very presentable chances to make it four on the day and it’s becoming a regular occurrence right now. Hopefully he just needs one to go in and then he’ll be back to his clinical best for the rest of the season.
Final word
If I was going to actually use one word, I’d say ‘huge’. What a massive, massive win. Different context entirely, but it does remind me of another big win up in the North East from last season, when Gabriel headed home a late winner at Newcastle. Hopefully this game can do the same for us this season, as a lot of Arsenal fans point to that game at Newcastle as a key moment in the title race from last year. It’s just three points, but given what happened there last season and how we’ve started this season, it feels really important for us to carry on this run of form, so hopefully this momentum will continue to push the team forward and we can keep racking up the wins.
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