Arsenal bring the barbed wire gloves as Bruno strikes down Sunderland

What a hard-fought victory that was yesterday, I must say, and I think we all knew that before a ball was kicked.

This is a defensively organised Sunderland team. It’s a strong and physical Sunderland team. It’s a side who go direct, long and want a battle, which is evidenced by Dan Ballard’s post-match comments when interviewed on TNT Sports after the game. Brobbey was an absolute handful for Konsa all night, Ballard was a physical presence on set piece and long throw-ins, and our two centre-backs, Declan Rice and the rest of the team who dealt with the aeerial bombardment, did it superbly I thought.

But as Mikel has already said, I also thought that the referee had a poor game. A really poor game, actually, and I do think it is important we call this out. In fact, after victory, it is doubly important to call out refereeing and VAR performances like last night, because we can’t be accused of sour grapes in defeat. We won. That’s the headline. But we also saw a terrible refereeing and VAR performance from Messeurs Brooks and Attwell.

On Attwell, I said on social media before a ball was kicked, “Attwell on VART. Gulp” and that’s exactly how we all felt on 54 minutes after Brooks had suggested Konsa had fouled Ballard, and Attwell had “checked and cleared” the on field decision. It’s situations like this that we can’t really point too many fingers at the referee on the pitch. He’s trying to look at about 10 things happening in the box, he’s trying to spot things through a crowded penalty box of players, so if he interprets something a certain way, then you have to just wait until another pair of eyes can see it.

I mean, just look at this:

Ballard has Konsa’s shirt as much, maybe even more, than Konsa has his. And on Match of the Day last night both Thomas Frank and Ashley Williams – neither of whom have any attachment or affinity with Arsenal (even though we all say Thomas is a silver member ) – both said that they didn’t think it was a penalty.

For those moronic rival fans saying that we have VAR and PGMOL in our pocket, laughable in any way you look at it, how can you muppets explain this then, eh? I thought what Frank said was interesting though in that clip I’ve linked to, because he says what we all say, i.e. in the first couple of weeks there’s usually an example to be made of a new directive. But after about week three, usually things go back to normal. This was a VAR in Attwell who wanted to make an example of The Arsenal. And they got what they wanted.

But they also got what they deserved. David Raya’s penalty save was brilliant. Quite often when you see penalty saves it is because the penalty is struck straight at the ‘keeper, too far down the middle, but Raya was a full stretch, he tipped it on to the post, then the roar he gave out when it was cleared was brilliant. My stream was about a minute late, so annoyingly I saw the response on social media channels first, but I didn’t care, because justice was done.

And then we served up a slice of wonderment with our first goal.

Bruno G. Who else?

I saw the Geordies all taking particular delight in that online, and many of them saying “He’s won me back” after his celebration, which was a repetition of a celebration he did to Sunderland players and fans whilst in a Newcastle shirt, decrying them as ‘small’ by using a fingers gesture. There was nothing ‘small’ about his finish though. One touch to bring it out of his feet, then an absolute peach of a finish from around 25 yards out. In midweek I talked about how Martin Odegaard’s goal was one of those beautiful ones because it came in off the post, which is the best way to score goals. Bruno G had a ‘hold my beer’ moment, as his howitzer came in off the underside of the bar and he wheeled away in celebration. He would have absolutely loved that. In fact, if you asked him what team he’d like to get his first goal against, I bet it would have been Sunderland. His celebrations would have enraged the home fans, intent on booing his every touch, and the best way to respond is to top-bins one beyond their goalie. Great stuff.

That goal had happened around a minute-and-a-half after the penalty, so it would have been a sucker-punch for Sunderland, but with 30 minutes still on the clock, there was still plenty of time to mount a response. And to be fair to them, they continued to make life difficult for us. They continued to go long, they had more of the last 10 – 15 minutes, and it felt like history might repeat itself with some of the Sunderland bodies being thrown at the goal underneath Raya’s crossbar. Sunderland created more xG against us last night than all of our three previous opponents in the Premier League combined. Yet we held out, sealing the game with Saka’s late penalty.

This was a great result. The Stadium of light will be a really tough place to go for several teams this season. Yet we’ve ticked that off, as well as Villa Park, already. And we’ve shown we can have a physical battle with the most physical of teams. This is an Arsenal team with heavy fight in them. John Terry’s moronic pre-Chelsea game comments were once again shown up to be a complete falsehood; if you want a battle with this Arsenal team, we’ll have it. If you want to put barbed wire on your boxing gloves, we’ll do the same, and we’ll trade blows with you. But please, bring a proper referee next time. Let’s have a proper fight, eh?

That’s pretty much it from me for today I think. I was going to go into some individual performances, like how I didn’t think Saka, Tzolis or Lewis-Skelly were too great yesterday, but in matches like this where it’s just so attritional, you’re going to get one or two players that are just off the boil a bit. So instead, let’s focus on the collective effort, which was very sound last night and see’s us go top of the Premier League, at least until the Manchester Derby plays out later this afternoon.

Amanda and James are trying to sort out a pod either today or tomorrow evening, so keep your eyes peeled on the Same Old Arsenal YouTube page for that one, but for now, from me, I’ll wish you and yours a fine Sunday.