First Thoughts: Sunderland vs Arsenal

My raw reaction on the final whistle to Fulham vs Arsenal

Well, that sure was annoying and frustrating. I only have time for a quick one today but here are some quick thoughts right at full time.

Main takeaway: Sometimes you get footballed

Arsenal made a couple mistakes here in this match and they ended up getting the maximum punishment for it.

The first goal is one where Declan Rice can do better and he almost always does, just one of those where the ball bouncing throws everything off and Dan Ballard pounced to end the scoreless streak.

The second goal came with some warning signs proceeding it but David Raya came up big to clean up the potential mess.

Arsenal were not great, but they were not two goals allowed bad either.

Even if it doesn’t work this way, Arsenal had been riding holding teams to the left side of the distribution on the goal outcomes and ran into one on the right-hand side here.

Arsenal showed a lot of fight to get back into this match after a first half that wasn’t great. They came out and created a number of openings in the second half and put themselves back on top and that should have been enough to see the way to an 11th straight victory.

It just looked like that fight back, on the back of this being the third straight away match was just too much, and Arsenal ended up with the points shared here.

I will probably have some questions about riding the team so hard going until the 88th minute for the first (and only) substitute. I understand the team was short in attack but there was still plenty of midfield and defensive talent on the bench that could have helped give the team some more legs here.

This match felt like it fell into the pattern for long stretches of what Sunderland wanted. Some of that was down to what the referee was giving and some might have been on Arsenal not being able to get a full hold on it. I got a bit annoyed with them, and some of the stuff felt classic “up north” where they can be hard men (boarding on dirty IMO) but also somehow still get some soft fouls their direction. It is something that it has happened at Newcastle previously and it repeated here.

The video below was not a major factor in the match, but it illustrates a bit of how things went:

This was a foul called on Arsenal.

Look, you have to overcome those things and referees are human too. The crowd there sounded very up for it and made it a hostile environment. I do generally think that Arsenal did that here but maybe needed to have the match get themselves ahead earlier and add a second.

Sunderland are not a bad team but I also still came away thinking that this was a match Arsenal should have been able to do come away with all three points. They have lived a charmed life and that continues after his one. Hopefully they can get those same bounces to take points off of Liverpool and City this year too.

Positives: