Right, deep breaths, everyone. That one took about fifteen years off my life, but four games in and we're still sat pretty at 4-0-0. Let's talk about it.
For a good chunk of this game, it looked like the sensible, serene Saturday night out we all wanted. Arteta rolled out a rotated side — Havertz back through the middle, Tzolis given a run out on the left, the usual suspects elsewhere — and for long spells we had 66% of the ball and Sunderland chasing shadows. Chance after chance came and went. Saka fizzing one wide here, a goal-line clearance there, Odegaard threading passes like he's got a satnav wired into his brain. Everything, in short, except an actual goal.
Which, if you've watched this Arsenal side for more than about ten minutes, you'll know is basically our signature dish at this point: dominate, create, miss, repeat. It's like watching someone assemble flat-pack furniture perfectly and then forget to put the final screw in.
Then, eleven minutes into the second half, Sunderland won a penalty, and I genuinely can't tell you what it was for, because apparently neither could Arteta. He was fuming afterwards, going full "there's no penalty in any game, in any league" — and look, I'm always going to agree with my manager when he's angry at a decision that went against us; that's just the rules of being a fan. Enzo Le Fée stepped up to smash Sunderland ahead and send the Stadium of Light into meltdown...
...and then David Raya said no.
Palmed it away against the post like it was nothing, like he wasn't just single-handedly saving the entire evening. I have never been so relieved by a goalkeeper's left hand in my life.
And here's the beautiful, ridiculous thing about football: two minutes — TWO MINUTES — after that save, we're in front. Bruno Guimarães, on as a half-time substitute, picks the ball up miles outside the box and just absolutely leathers it into the top corner. First goal for the club. Against his old rivals Newcastle's neighbours, of all the times to pick. The man clearly has a flair for the dramatic — turn up, wait for the perfect moment of maximum tension, then just casually end the contest with a strike from the car park.
From "we might actually lose this" to "we're winning this" in the space of about 120 seconds. Football is a genuinely unwell sport, and I love it.
To their credit, Sunderland didn't just fold. Mukiele in particular seemed to have personally decided he was going to single-handedly drag his team back into it, forcing a couple of smart saves out of Raya and generally being a nuisance all evening. Tempers started fraying as the game wore on, cards started flying around like confetti, and it all got very, very spicy in stoppage time.
Which brings us to the double whammy that sealed it: Reinildo picks up a second yellow and an early bath, and moments later Saka is through on goal, gets scythed down, and slots the resulting penalty away like he hadn't just watched the away end have a collective cardiac event ten minutes earlier.
2-0. Job done. Somehow.
We finished with just shy of 2 expected goals to Sunderland's 1.64 — so numerically it was closer than I'd like to admit, and Arteta himself more or less said the same after the game: the performance deserved more comfort than the scoreline gave us. But four games in, one goal conceded all season in the league, a Champions League clean sheet in Naples in midweek, and a fourth straight win to keep the perfect record intact? I'll happily sign up for "gritty and slightly chaotic" every single week if it keeps ending like this.
Final Thought
Somewhere between Raya's penalty save, Guimarães deciding he fancied trying his luck from Row Z, and Saka's not-so-convincing finish with ten men bearing down on him, I aged about a decade. But we're top, we're unbeaten, and we're already talking about Brighton next week like it's a formality (it will not be a formality, nothing ever is, please never let me say that again).
COYG. Somebody get David Raya a cup of tea and a medal.
