Fab saves us from Black Cats smash ‘n’ grab

THE Stadium of Light is a long old schlep.

If I’m entirely honest, if Saturday’s game had been live on the box, I might’ve been sorely tempted to stop at home instead of spending a gruelling 12 hours at the wheel of my motor, only to endure 90 minutes in the wind and rain at a North-East encounter, which hardly held the promise of being a particularly scintillating affair.

But then until such time as this column is renamed “Recliner Armchair Rabbit”, instead of “Terrace Talk”, I’d feel too much of a fraud if I didn’t make the effort. And as every travelling fan knows, a failure to pay one’s dues at the Premiership’s least tempting profferings can prove the sort of fatal mistake that will often guarantee one misses out on the game of the season.

I would’ve also thought that most travelling Gooners would know better than to give up the ghost on this Arsenal side. I pity the many poor souls who made a disconsolate dash for the exits on 85 minutes, the moment Leadbitter’s speculative shot nestled in the back of Almunia’s net.

I know it’s an almost instinctive, ‘not our day’ type reaction to want to escape the scene of one’s misery, after having the rug pulled from beneath our feet, with what was the epitome of a smash ‘n’ grab.

How gutted must these Gooners have been to have missed out on the gleeful celebrations that greeted Cesc Fabregas’ equaliser, as the young Spaniard salvaged not just a point, but some self-respect, by avoiding our worse start to a season in umpteen years.

I imagine most will be too embarrassed to admit it, but I simply can’t imagine my last Arsenal memory before a six-hour return trip and a two-week international break being the sound of the eruption in the stadium, loud enough to indicate a goal but not sufficiently sonorous to suggest a second for the home side. !

Saturday’s match was evidence of the contrasting levels of expectations between the two sets of supporters. As with most yo-yo clubs, you get the distinct sense that Sunderland fans are simply grateful to retain their invitation to the Premiership party. An Arsenal home crowd would scream their disgust if Wenger dared to employ Roy Keane’s negative tactics, getting 10 men behind the ball for the entire 90.

Nevertheless, Arsène should be more than used to opposing managers paying us this sort of respect.

Sunderland must be commended for the well drilled way in which they stuck to their manager’s game plan, and as frustrating as it proved, any criticism should be directed at our own lack of dynamism.

Mercifully, the miserable weather abated during the second half, just long enough for a football match to break out.

It’s all well and good for the best teams to be patient, but when all efforts to pick a path through the bodies blocking the route to goal, the obvious answer is to employ a sufficient burst of pace to deny the opposition time to get back into position.

I can only recall two instances where the Gunners managed to attack at sufficient speed for Sunderland to have only five men tracking back into their box still facing their own goal. One resulted in Van Persie forcing a decent save from Gordon and the other in the ref disallowing a perfectly good goal. For all our possession, it was the home side’s rare forays forward which proved more threatening, as our attack lacked the necessary incisiveness.

Considering Sunderland’s lack of ambition, Alex Song was superfluous as a midfield enforcer.

In a contest with the obese and the infirm (an overweight Reid and a positively pensionable Yorke), the more cerebral ball skills of Samir Nasri might’ve proved more successful.

Having blown eight of 21 points to date — to continue with the feline analogy — I can’t help but feel that it is a bit early to have already nixed the majority of our nine lives. I suppose we should be grateful to Spurs for making themselves the Premier League laughing stock.