21st February 2010, FOOTBALL: Arsenal 2 Sunderland 0

After the hideous debacle of our defeat in Porto, I'm not sure too many people were looking forward to this one with much excitement, especially not when it was announced that Silvestre started in the back four. However, as has so often occurred this season, Arsenal went and proved me wrong. Walcott started and gave a commendable performance, Nasri actually did stuff, providing penetration rather than the usual sideways passes, Bendtner caused problems and even the man Silvestre was pretty much faultless. Special mention surely though goes to Emmanuel Eboue for his man of the match performance. His direct runs into the area caused panic in the Sunderland defence, he defended well and he made the first goal. We should've and could've scored more and had a particularly tense 20 minutes or so where it felt like we could've thrown it away but a last minute penalty from the under-performing Fabregas sealed it. All in all, this was a hugely enjoyable match. We showed promise, with more incisive play than usual but also left ourselves open to danger (Jones should've scored at least once for Sunderland, who showed occasional threat but little else) and our failure to kill the game off made for a hugely entertaining afternoon.