Sunderland 1 - Arsenal 1

How was Song redundant? Please explain it to me because he made quite a lot of tackles and stopped a lot of potential play occuring with his positional skill. Yes, Denilson is great going forward bla bla bla, we all know that, but is there a need for him congesting the midfield when we need space to work in?

Yes that is fair enough. But the use of Denilson stifled out attack and made it less easy to score because people were stepping on each others toes.

It's worrying and extremely annoying how we buss a game for the mojarity, and come away with a point or nothing. I seriously hope this season doesn't become a hiccup of two seasons ago where each game is a frustration.

Whenever Wenger gave a post macth interview commenting that the opposing team defended very well, you'd know we had dropped points. Effectively our chance for the title is gone because MU, Chelsea are unlikely to lose to Fulham, Hull & draw with Sunderland. We nearly lost but managed to save a point in the end but had Sunderland been good with set pieces, we could have lost. The game plan against us is very simple. Make it very compact at the final third. Try to hit with long balls & set pieces. We can't really lay blame on the players because it is the tactic that dictate their game. It couldn't be so coincident that whenever we dropped points, all the players on the pitch performed at a rating of 6 or below. We can't ask Ade & van Persie to play one-two passing when the area is so congested. We can't ask Fab to tread in through balls when there is no opening. Also we can't ask Walcott to take on fullback when he has to beat a 'pseudo winger', a defensive midfielder, then the only the fullback, get the picture? We need a plan B & we need to improve on our set pieces significantly. What would MU, Chelsea & Liv do when they face an opponent who park a bus in front of their goal? Simply they would try to win free kicks & corners because their conversion rates are much higher compared to us (even Bolton and Hull are better). It has been a problem so many years & it will always remain a problem to us - dropping points against team all other top teams are beating.

I just wish AW can be more "ruthless" and "quick" at times in making subs when the going is not right. Vela should be introduced much earlier rather than we are a goal down for a possible variation in our attacking approach

Having only watch the hightlights on ATVO, it seems that Sunderland was happy to have a nil nil draw, then they scored. It could so easliy have been another defeat for The Arsenal. So Thanks Cesc for using your Head! I understand that RvP had scored a goal from a cross from Walcott which was ruled out. Why was it not shown on the Hightlights?!

I'd also like to say that that was the worst refereeing performance I've seen in at least a year. Seven bookings and not one of them was deserved. Gordon was taking in excess of sixty seconds to spot up goal kicks and the referee did not even once give a cursory touch of his watch. At one point, Gallas ran behind the goal to place the ball down for him and was told off by Lee Mason. The disallowed goal was a terrible piece of officiating too, I was right on top of Walcott when he crossed it and it never even occurred to me the ball had crossed, to the point that I couldn't work out why the goal had been chalked off until I saw the ref point to the six yard box.

Tom14, Song was good, but a bit slow sometimes. He was definitely not redundant but that didn't warrant you to call some one stupid. Loosen up mate :)

In the context of the game, we didn't need Denilson AND Song, but I didn't expect Sunderland to be THAT defensive. Amos is correct that Walcott should not have played, for reasons I have articulated in mymatch report, but the net result was we were too predictable because Walcott'sinclusion forced us to be less fluid than we had been at Bolton for example, Eboue serves that midfield unit better.

ATVO has been really poor so far this season in what they've decided to show. Another that stands out is the Davies horror tackle on Clichy and most of the 'events' from any match tend to be omitted.