Arsenal left the Stadium of Light with what the preview said was on offer: top of the Premier League outright, three points clear of Manchester City before City play at Old Trafford on Sunday. Four wins from four, eight scored, one conceded, and a fifteenth meeting with Sunderland without defeat. The champions finished the job this time. Their manager spent the evening explaining how close they came to not finishing it.
For 55 minutes it was the game the preview warned about. Arsenal had two thirds of the ball before the break and the better of the chances, and put none of them away. Kai Havertz fired over from Martin Ødegaard's cutback and then wasted a second he had made for himself. Bukayo Saka failed to meet a Declan Rice ball over the top. Sunderland's one clear sight of goal came on 16 minutes, Dan Ballard bundling wide from a Granit Xhaka free-kick. Mikel Arteta was booked before half-time for leaving his technical area. At the break he took off Ben White and Myles Lewis-Skelly for Jurrien Timber and Bruno Guimarães. Within eleven minutes of the restart the game had turned twice.
On 56 minutes John Brooks gave Sunderland a penalty at a corner, Ezri Konsa penalised for holding Ballard off the ball. VAR confirmed a holding offence. Enzo Le Fée went low to David Raya's left and Raya went with him, turning the ball onto the post. Two minutes and one second later Guimarães took a pass from Rice 23 yards out and hit it in off the underside of the bar, his first goal for Arsenal since the summer move from Newcastle, scored at the home of Newcastle's fiercest rivals.
Sunderland's home record went with it, in front of 47,675. Two games at the Stadium of Light without conceding became two goals conceded in one, though the second did not arrive until the seventh minute of stoppage time, when Reinildo Mandava fouled Saka for a second yellow card and Saka put the penalty away with the final kick of the night.
Arteta's post-match was about none of that. Asked about the save, he said the conversation should be about what came before it, and called the award "a judo roll from the opponent. Ezri does nothing." He said it was unacceptable at this level, that the game had gone unprotected, and that it could have cost Arsenal the match and the momentum. Brooks, on the broadcast audio, said Konsa was "all over him at the near post facing the wrong way."
Two readings, then. One is a manager with a title lead choosing to spend the night on a decision that changed nothing on the scoreboard. The other is that it changed nothing only because of the save Arteta declined to discuss. The preview said control is not the same as finishing the job. They finished it, and the man who got them there did not get a mention from his own manager.
