Match Report: Sunderland 1-1 Arsenal
|Arsenal travelled to north East England looking to get back to winning ways in the league after last weeks shock loss to Premier League newcomers Hull City.
Alex Song was been handed a starting place ahead of French midfield maestro Samir Nasri after Wednesday’s 4-0 mauling of FC Porto, other than that, the team was unchanged.
Sunderland Starting XI
Gordon
Chimbonda – Ferdinand – Collins – McCartney
Malbranque – Whitehead – Yorke – Reid
Richardson
Cisse
Arsenal Starting XI
Almunia
Sagna – Toure – Gallas – Clichy
Walcott – Fabregas – Song – Denilson
Adebayor – van Persie
The Gunners’ shock loss to Hull last weekend was supposedly out of their system after they thrashed Porto in midweek.
But from the start the visitors looked short of ideas, while Sunderland had a keen determination about them.
And Roy Keane’s men has the first chance following a lapse in concentration from Walcott.
The young winger blindly played the ball back towards his own goal and Cisse was only denied a shot by the onrushing Manuel Almunia, who blocked at the striker’s feet.
Sunderland had nearly got in before that, when Dean Whitehead almost latched on to Steed Malbranque’s fine pass but Kolo Toure slid in with a well-timed tackle.
The hosts’ strategy already clear – get numbers behind the ball and try to break quickly when the opportunity arose. And they were doing it well.
Arsenal had all the possession but were delaying their passes too long and, there was a lethargy about their general play.
Their only efforts were an off-target header from Alex Song, who was starting in place of Samir Nasri, and long-range shots from Denilson, Walcott and Fabregas.
It was Cisse who had the best effort of a low-grade first half when he hit a rising drive that Almunia was forced to tip over the bar.
Second Half
Soon after the break Arsenal thought they had opened the scoring, but Van Persie’s volley was ruled out as Walcott’s cross was judged to have gone out of play.
Surprisingly it did not have the effect of stirring Arsenal into action, and they continued to play into Sunderland’s hands.
Adebayor had a shot that Gordon spilled, but the danger was quickly cleared.
At the other end, Kieran Richardson shot straight at Almunia and Andy Reid did the same with a free-kick.
However, most of the match continued to be played in the Sunderland half.
And Arsenal’s best chance came when Nicklas Bendtner dinked the ball over the top for Van Persie to volley but Gordon produced a fine reflex save to deny the Dutchman.
Then Sunderland came up with a moment of brilliance as Leadbitter picked up the ball just outside the box and struck a magnificent shot into the top corner, in off the underside of the bar.
Goal: Grant Leadbitter (86) – Sunderland 1-0 Arsenal
That seemed to have won it for Sunderland but there was still time for a final twist as Fabregas managed to rise highest at the near post to head in Van Persie’s corner.
Goal: Cesc Fabregas (90+3) – Sunderland 1-1 Arsenal
An amazing last minute goal from Fabregas which summed up the abysmal day for Arsenal. The score only tells half of the story with Sunderland controlling the majority of play. Arsene Wenger needs to sort this team out – and soon.
Arsenal should of won 2-1 But Referees are corrupt. Get electronic Refereeing for sure.
Another half-hearted performance from the gooners. The disallowed goal was shambolic, and we should have scored a couple more. Not many posotives can be taken from this poor performance other than fabregas finally getting off the mark. IMO thats our title challenge over !
Not sure about the formation from wenger. no link from midfield as Van Persie on left and fabregas back away from goal for most of match.
http://arsenalcolumn.wordpress.com/
I feel sick. Eduardo ASAP!
Until when will we keep on taking shit from everyone? I dont care if the disallowed goal was wrongfuly disallowed. We should not be giving excuses for our shitty on and off performances. It is pretty obvious that a team without consistency is a team without leaders. Why are we giving the players too much space to shoot? I think it is about time that we realize the truth behind our failures. Who is our leader? Who is the player that will guide the team and organize the lines? We have no one who is talking to the players. Remember when Gilberto was holding the ARMBAND for the injured HENRY. we got good defending and good results. He used to talk to the players and tell them what to do and where to go. Gallas is bullshit if i may say. He is crap. He is killing the team. How could have Wenger been so blind to keep him this year? I will not start the discussion about the midfielder we should have bought because Denilson is nowhere near a proffessional EPL player yet. He is a slow learner who looses concentration a lot of the times. Well we will have DIABY back soon so i will shut up on this issie until then. If Viera could come back for a couple of seasons, it would be great. A leader and a strong Midfielder. How come the manager doesnt have the same concerns as we do. I adore Wenger but please and God please, i dont want us to loose more points. The way it is going, i do not want to see us fighting for fourth place again. I want the TITLE, we all want the TITLE
Wenger should of played Song and Nasri from the start. He didn’t want to drop Denilson but wanted to play Song and decided to play them both meaning there was no width in the midfield except on the right, Van Persie is ineffectual on the left you gotta play him just behind Adebayor but in fairness we never deserved to lose that game. Sunderland had 10 men behind the ball and made it difficult for us to create chances. There’s no way we’re out of the title race but we can’t afford to be complacent anymore.
And I wonder why Vela isn’t given more playing time, I think he should be given a start to see if he can be relied upon.
Say every player is fit for Arsenal, What would be the best formation?
Almunia
Sagna–Toure–Gallas–Clichy
Nasri–Fabregas–Song–Rosicky
Van Persie–Adebayor
And the players who can come on if those who start aren’t doing the business would be Walcott, Diaby, Djourou, Vela and Eduardo.
VELA is not the guy who is gonna save us. RVP is doing well and ADE, well you dont know if he is gonna be shit or good. I think the best thing to do is to play ADE once every 2 games since he does well in a game and shit in the other. He has got to learn the offside trick. What a fool. In hard games that the one we played today, we need muscle in the middle and experience. I dont know why Denilson was put on the left. We could have played NASRI or EBOUE along with WALCOTT. Sometimes i fail to understand those poor decisions. I am sure that if we recruit RONALDO, We will try to play him in defence to show how versatile we are. We had no reason to play Denilson today. No injuries, so we had rather other logical options
Wenger has made a mistake not adding to the squad with top class playrs. We are not going to win the premiership thats for certain! CL is what we have to aim for.
Drawing to Sunderland away isnt a bad result but we could have easily won this game. I really dont know what Wenger was thinking in playing RvP on the left and leaving out Nasri… RvP is in no way a winger and Nasri and Clichy have a great understanding between each other.
It irks me reading people saying our title chances are over. For God’s sake the season has barely started!
Denilson is frustrating to watch, hes so inconsistent! I would much rather have Song in there as a regular.
We didnt play badly, and credit to Sunderland who defended extremely well. It’s a tough result to take though. We could have won it and again wenger’s team selection will be questioned.
Are you kidding me? CL is a dream that we will never achieve with what we are doing. We have the players to win both competitions but we should start giving them fixed positions.If Denilson is a center mid, then dont play him on the left. It is basic management. DIABY is supposed to be the one to hold the midfield but if he gets injured again i am gonna quit the whole football game. I do not want to be disappointed again. We have no other midfielder. YOu can not put Denilson or Song infront of BALLACK LAMPARD< GERRARD, GATUSSO, etc…….
next season will never come for us because every summer we are going to lose players. Its sad because we are on of the best teams in Europe on our day but to win the premership you have to be consistent. And how do you become consistent when yo have players like Song, Eboue in the rotation and playing Denilson as a right sided player when he is a central midfielder. We have to wait for Diaby, Rosicky and Eduardo to be fit now before we have enough quality in the squad….and who knows when that will be
We have to beat United, Chelsea and Liverpool both home and away to now get an edge because we have lost 2 and drawn 1 so we cant afford anymore slip ups
Why is it that certain teams, i.e. Arsenal,seem to have goals disallowed in games that either result in a draw or a loss causing dropped points and always at a time in the league when it is a great convenience to other big named teams because they either need to catch Arsenal or slow/stop the Gunners momentum.If the Gunners happen to catch a break it seems to be a situation where they would have won the game with/without a break.Is it just me being bias as a Gunner or not? Maybe we might be privileged enough to get an apology.I know,I know wishful thinking.
linesman is a complete cretin..but what do we expect from the refs and linesman nowadays..continuously making bad decisions..and not just for arsenal! its too early to day whether our title challenge is over but if such inconsistency continues any longer then we will have no chance. we will now need to win most of our top 4-6 clashes to gain the advantage now..why does wenger ALWAYS have at least 2 players playing out of their natural position EVERY GAME
Lets stop blaming the ref, we were not good enough to break down a hard working Sunderland team, same against Hull and Fulham, so why are we not able to break these teams down? Because we do not have Hleb who is able to change the pace of the game and take on players and create space for other players and we had a work horse in Flamini which gave Fabregas the license to go forward. It is now showing how important the two of them were
what has happened to arsene wenger.Y are we playing like liverpool all of a sudden.Attacking is our biggest strength and we shud stick to our strengths.Y nasri dint start will remain a mystery to me.Adebayor and denislon were shit.There was no urgency in arsenal’s game.Why is it that we bring our best game only when we go down?Cant we start a match all guns blazing.I AM so fucking pissed rite now.Its not too late. We still have time to recover.But wenger should get things rite soon.
i really dont know what to say. i dont understand why Arsene persist with Adebayor and V Persie combination.
i used to like V. Persie in the past but I think he is too much off form. he has a good shot but he is too selfish and is not the link man (berkamp) type of player as people has claimed he is.
and i really want to know what adebayor supporters has to say again. i dont know what he is good at. he is a complete waste of space.
oh wait, i know what adebayor is good at.
besides good at countless offsides
he is good at going to the byeline and then holding the ball and passing it back.
he is good at slowing down play to let the defense to regroup.
he is especially good at missing good chances and shooting high and wide.
did you guys see the difference bendter made when he came on? he is more direct and creative with his passing and everytime he has the possesion, you feel there is a chance we might score. he certainly did more in 25 minutes than adebayor did in 90 mins.
V Persie and Ade looks good when we win but we need someone who can make a difference. someone who is a match winner such as drogba, torres we can score out of nothing or create a goal with a moment of genius.
any decent strikers in the arsenal team will score a fair amount of goals not to mention that Ade is our penalty taker.
anyway i dont se Ade scoring 30 goals this season.
i really hope Arsene bench V Persie and the hopeless Adebayor and give Bendter and Vela a chance.
if i wanted to read a report copied from the bbc website i would have printed it out and put my own name at the bottom. you are a joker.
Certain players in arsenal are just too complacent.Especially denilson,clichy and gallas. I lost count of the no. of times when denilson gave the ball away. Clichy for all his pace just doesnt get forward. Whenever he does it results in him giving in this shit looping cross.Hez a gud player but he cud do soo much better.Adebayor has been awful this season.He is 6ft 4 and still cant win headers properly. There is absolutely no work rate from his side.Bendtner who has started this season so well gets benched. Wonder what he has to do to get into the lineup.Certain players just dnt seem to have enough desire.Song had a decent game but was clearly at fault for the goal.I wud rather pair ramsey with fabregas cos he will work his ass off for the team
i have to disagree with the comments there arsenal were a bit short in sharpness but its very hard if the opision camp them selves in there own half,i completely disgree with comment that we need hleb back he was far to indirect, i think wenger was very mush looking to protect the defence with inclusion of song instead of nasri,we did miss alot of width becuase delison is not realy wide player, but wenger is quite clearly trying keep his players fresh,i feel the inclusion of diaby will help and also risisky will alos help, i do feel that arsenal can keep in contension by jan or feb then we have very strong chance by which time we should have alot of our big players back.
Disgusting!! Embarrasing. Arsenal sucks! Buch of lazy, overpaid, indicisive kids who keep playing passes around the box, but never shoot or even try to score, just pass around. They can’t defend worth shit, and can’t score a goal to save their lives. Our midfield is a discrace, we need a left winger, a right winger, a defencive midfielder, 2 centerbacks and a striker that actually scores, in other words, replace everybody bur the fullbacks and Fabregas. Wenger doesn’t even know what the word tactics even mean. Pathetic performance. Unless the opposition does not play like dead, blind people, arsenal don’t have a chance to win, Porto gave up after 30 minutes, so it was easy to score, they did nothing to even try and prevent the goals. Arsenal haven’t even played any of the better teams, like Villa and City, not to mention United and Chelsea, and alredy dropped 7 points against the weakest teams in the league. Dear God, will somebody in that team even want to win anything other than pity? I encourage all season holders to throw away their tickets and save themselves from the dissapointment that is to come this season.
Dudes!!! the title race IS OVER!!! Last season we only lost 3 games, and we winded up at 3 place, this year, as some of u mentioned, the season has “barely stated” and alredy we lost 2 and drew 1, 1 more loss and we can only compete for 3/4 place again, and do you really think we can play 30 games without losing playing like we did aganst Hull and Fulham! HA, Wenger is a fool, Diaby sucks in midfield, strong, yes, good, far from it, gives tha ball away more than denilson, constantly out of posission. Song is inconsistent, Denilson is, as you see, not ready, so, get Yaya or another powerhose who is willing to run like hell and tackle anything. Rosicky will be back and the left side is goind to be flawless again, that leaves Nasri on the right, dop Robin, he sucks, get Eduardo, Bendtner or Vela in there. Gallas can kiss my ass and donate his captain bind to anyone else, worst leader in Arsenal’s history, does not know what to say or to who or even when, because of that Kolo also sucks now. When Gilberto was captain, he commented on everyone where they should be, what to do and how to do it. He did it for 90 minutes and at that time Galls and Toure were a defencive rock, noone could get pass them. But for Crist’ sake, get a holding midfielder, doesn’t have to be technically gifted even, as long as he has muscles, speed, stamina and is able to position himself right, and of cource tackle well and follow the runs back
peace out, gunners will stink this season, this pains me, but it is inevitable
i feel sorry for cesc, he deserves to be winning title and i feel he may never do that if wenger is in charge. it frustrates me so much how such a good coach with the wonderful football (most of the time) and spotting bargains, that wenger has such huuuuuge flaws such as the refusal to buy a strong tough tackling DCM and also to have the bottle to drop the worst captain in arsenals history and the completely rubbish, useless joke of a striker adebayor who is woeful now just after being given more of the fans money..SOMETHING HAS TO CHANGE
what the fuck is galls meant to do with a team off under 21s? pv4 had sol campbell at the back and the king th14 in front off him. what has galls got? didnt wanker say hes got a team who win anything? i bein sayin this for over 4years now wenger has 2 go and mange a under16 team. arsenal cant even beat sunderland anymore this is 2 much. he had the time and money 2 sort it but he didnt.
its true wanker is more in to makeing money then football. hes allways talking about other teams but cant see hes team is shit. fucking wanker when is he gonna go.
haha wanker knows…i few years ago i would of told someone like you to fuck off but now i have to kind of agree..wengers has or is beginning TO LOSE IT
BARCAAAAAAAAAAAAA PLAYINGGG SIKKKKKKKKK MAN WINNING 5-1 AMD ITS NOT TOUCHED 60 MINZ YETTT.
we need 2 spend some money, no reason why it should slow down the development of the more talented younger players, barry, huntellar and a strong no noncence centre back.
I don’t think Arsenal will be a Champion this sesson IF they play like that…so poor,I think da tactic also poor…how da best manager used that worst tactic,I hope nxt time Arsene used basically tactic 4-4-2…we need the winner to be da Champion…how draw and lost will give this team a Silver…I think not..
They were tired… simple.
But we can reach the title. (It depends on the rivals – but they can reach a draw as well, look Cluj-Chelsea)
We had 11 draws last year. (11 points.) If we can turn 7 matches into win, it means 21 points. And we can lose the remaining 4 matches.
We will see. Now we have an international break, it seems Nasri won’t play, so he can train with Denilson and Almunia.
I hope every player will return with good emotions after that, we will have Diaby as well, and we will play at home.
Are you serious with that recap? “Sunderland controlled the majority of the play” – you must be joking.
Arsenal as usual controlled the play – dominated actually – and couldnt break through. Hey Arsene, here is an idea:
1) Leave Denilson back on the beach in Rio. While he is there, tell him to learn from some kid in the street how to complete a pass. He is the biggest waste of a midfield spot I could possibly imagine.
2) Maybe tell Clichy and Sagna that these high crosses we constantly flutter in the box do not work. Especially with only one man up top (more on that later).
3) Tell that greedy imbecile up top that we need his gangly body in the box so he can miss headers, scuff 6 yard shots, and hold up play for 3 hours while Sunderland’s 10 men get back.
4) Maybe come up with a better link-up man than RVP. How about putting Nasri or Fabregas in that role and letting Bendtner or Vela have a run up top instead. RVP is about as similar to Bergkamp as Eboue is to Zidane.
5) Play Bendtner. No matter that he looks like a bumbling idiot out there, he is about the only one up top who actually creates and finishes chances. Good things seem to happen around him, and I do not think it is a coincidence anymore.
6) Get a clue!!!!!!!!!!!! We cannot keep losing or drawing with the likes of Fulham, Hull, and Sunderland. Quit with this 4-5-1 shite and rip into your team. If they cant get it done, since you refuse to spend money put the babies in there – at least they seem to have some heart!
FABREGAS IS LAZY!!!!
Yes i’m very disappointed with Fabs… he’s been fairly lazy recently… misplaced passes, lazy crosses… he don’t offer himself to accept a pass anymore!!!
What’s wrong with him!!!!