There are times when the best thing for a side is an uneventful win. Titles are won less in the big set-piece games than against mid-table teams in the easily forgotten circumstances of a Saturday afternoon. Arsenal weren’t brilliant against Sunderland, but they were good enough to win comfortably, and that increases their lead at the top of the table to nine points, adding a degree of extra pressure to Manchester City’s Sunday visit to Liverpool.
“They’re really tough opponents, really good at what they do,” said Mikel Arteta. “It’s very difficult to get sequences with threat and momentum, so I’m delighted with the performance.”
In a way this was the platonic ideal of Arteta’s football. Not a huge amount happened but most of what did was in or around the Sunderland box. It was bitty, stop-start, built around set-plays and devoid of much in the way of spontaneity and, in the end, they were simply better than opponents who made mistakes in the build-up to all three goals, one for Martín Zubimendi and two for Viktor Gyökeres.
Coaches obsessed by pressing patterns probably loved it, but this game will not live long in the wider collective memory. For a long time it seemed in danger of being mutually respected into stalemate, both teams watching, probing warily, even if in the end Arsenal’s probing proved far more dangerous.
