Slow and steady loses the race

Giving Arsenal a two goal lead is unforgivable, giving them it after 14 minutes is inexcusable but fighting back like warriors only to lose is damn right unbearable. Welcome to the world of a Sunderland fan, leave your heart at the front door on your way in, it will only get shattered.

TV and Setanta Sports combined to ruin my weekend, meaning a trip down to The Smoke on a Saturday afternoon so I could be fresh for our 12:00 appointment with the Gunners the following day. This was one of our longest away trips of the season so to makes things even harder they shove it in at lunch time on a Sunday, goodbye weekend, goodbye sleep-in and goodbye Nana's dinner.

Surprisingly I don't have nerves when we play big teams on their turf, I simply get drunk on my internal stupidity and optimism, thinking every thing's far too obvious for a Sunderland defeat, I smelt victory, and with it a McDonald's breakie. After the hour long complication of finding a parking space, a problem only found on trips to the capital, we walked to the ground in high spirits with many praying for just two or three with goal difference as vital as ever.

The common consensus amongst everyone was if we kept things tight in the first twenty minutes we had a good chance of keeping the score at a respectable level and maybe with a slice of luck, even nick a point. But what Sunderland should do and Sunderland actually do are two completely different things, an agony I've had the pleasure of feeling too many times, especially at the Arsenal.

We managed to keep a fruitless United attack at bay for nearly an hour and it took Liverpool the wrong side of thirty minutes to take the lead against us so we had reason to be slightly confident of keeping out the fantastic Fabregas, the awesome Adebayor and the relentless Robin Van Persie for at least twenty minutes. Oh how naive.

Wave after wave of ruthless Arsenal attacks rained down on our goal as we chased shadows of pure quality. Hleb was superb, Fabregas was in control and the front two were simply unstoppable. But that's no excuse. Grant Leadbitter (who I feel has been receiving some undeserving praise lately) showed his inexperience and basic lack of a brain to bundle over Fabregas for no reason on the edge of the box. He had done the one thing we had prayed against, he gave Arsenal a free shot at goal so early in the game and what happened? What do you think?

As usual our stupidity in defence, not to mention our complete lack of discipline contributed to our downfall. Because of the goal we were at sixes and sevens, we couldn't get the ball and looked scarily out of our depth. With 60,000 Gunners baying for our blood it was no surprise to see a second go in shortly after with a number of calamities allowing Senderos to stab home. We continually let ourselves down with silly goals which have to be erased if we are going to survive this season. Arsenal were fantastic but both goals could have been prevented and quite easily, Van Persie shouldn't have been given the opportunity to score and schoolboy defending simply isn't good enough at the top level.

What frustrated me most is how we suddenly came out of our shell and started to play football which did actually cause Arsenal problems. People will say that's because Arsenal took their foot of the gas and eased off which to some degree is true, however every time they got the ball they looked like scoring and continued to miss chance after chance. It's just now the game became more two-sided, finally Sunderland had got off the bus, just a shame they were twenty minutes late.

Liam Miller was fantastic I thought. He ran our midfield, being the first man to every ball, strong in the tackle and superb in his distribution. Finally Keane has realised he is the only proper footballer we have at the club, other players huff and puff and show great work-rate and passion but don't possess much skill, something Miller has in abundance, and something we are starting to use.

After Ross Wallace pulled one back you dared to sense a comeback was on the cards, even though it was plainly clear Arsenal would take it up a notch and overwhelm us like they did at the start of the game. The main aim was to get to half time only one behind, it would be a massive confidence booster to The Lads to think that they started abysmally but still had a chance of getting something out of the game.

The half-time whistle blew with Arsenal suddenly restricted in the final third. Dwight Yorke came out of his slumber to protect the back four with Michael Chopra a constant thorn in Clichy's side on the right, now why the hell didn't we do this from the start? Well we know why, because we're typical bloody Sunderland.

To think we actually equalised was quite unbelievable but in some ways it was rather deserved. The second half brought a massive display from everyone as it dawned on us that Arsenal were shaky at the back and because of their relaxed style of play, we would have plenty of chances to get a third. Manchester United never sat off us neither did Liverpool, they constantly closed us down and never gave us space, which would explain why we scored nil against both and barely registered a shot.

However Arsenal are different, they invite teams to attack which gave us an incentive to push forward and trouble their back-line. Yes while all this was happening Hleb, Van Persie and Walcott all were missing sitters but it's a known fact if we had the ball in their half they wouldn't score and with a bit of luck we would.

As heart-breaking as it was Arsenal were always going to win the game, of course they deserved it and on another day they could have had six. However heart must be taken from the fact we showed great character to fight back from the dead and at times showed great passages of play which created some good chances that on another day we might have put away.

Leaving the Emirates feeling gutted is a weird feeling for a Sunderland fan, Arsenal are a fantastic attacking team and are deservedly top of the league but why did it take us so long to realise they are beatable and why did we give them a head start? Because we are Sunderland.

But we keep the faith.

James Henderson