Match report – Player ratings – By the numbers – Video

A very welcome three points were earned yesterday, but it would be fair to say that there were moments in which we rode our luck, and ultimately had our goalkeeper to thank for keeping us in it.

Let’s start with the positives though, and they’re mostly individual rather than collective. The overall performance was pretty much that of a team depleted by injury and trying to find a way to cope with that, but there was another goal for Joel Campbell to put us ahead in the 34th minute. His run behind the full-back was excellent, and the first time finish as good as you could want.

Not sure about the celebration to be honest. Once, I get it, but look fella, every eejit has babies, we got it the first time. The chance was made for him by the sublime Mesut Ozil who spotted the run and he has the ability to weight the pass so perfectly that it’s like laying it on a plate for the attacker. The German had to step up in the absence of Alexis and Santi Cazorla, and that he misplaced 22 of his 107 passes might be viewed as careless by some, but only 2 of those passes weren’t played forward to try and create. Also, this – ooooooof.

Similarly, Aaron Ramsey was a hugely positive force in the centre of the midfield, always looking to create something, to make something happen, or have a go himself. It was his first game back in there after a long spell out on the right so I think he needs a few games to readjust slightly, but a goal and an assist was a very decent return for his day’s work. Again there were some moans at the passes that didn’t find their mark, but 114/124 shows how busy he was – he never, ever hides.

The goal that sealed the deal wasn’t one of his most memorable, but it was a reminder that he’s about the only midfielder in this team who would be in that position in the first place. And the ball for Olivier Giroud’s goal was just superb. The Frenchman had struggled throughout – and I do have some sympathy when you’re a lone forward against three central defenders, it’s not easy.

That said, I thought he should have held it up better at times rather than look for the first-time flicks so often, and his first half misery was compounded by that own goal just before the break. It was pretty clumsy, and when you use the wrong foot in those circumstances you’re likely to connect poorly, so the attempted clearance became a top corner finish into the wrong net.

Still, if there’s criticism for that there ought to be credit for the goal that put us back into the lead. Ramsey’s whipped ball was clever, Giroud’s run and finish under real pressure from a defender absolutely top class, so he worked hard to make up for his mistake.

So, moving on to talk about Petr Cech straddles the good and the bad because the goalkeeper played superbly, we have him to thank in large part for the fact we won yesterday. It encompasses the bad because defensively we allowed them too many chances to make him that busy. As early as the 4th minute Fabio Borini found himself clean through on goal. Koscielny had pushed forward and was bypassed leaving a great big gap for the Sunderland man to run into, we were opened up completely by one pass, but thankfully his shot was poor and Cech made a fairly routine save.

The keeper also prevented a Flamini own goal; he was strong from set-pieces; he made one save which resulted in a corner from which Sunderland probably should have equalised, but he made a brilliant save on the line from Fletcher. There was almost a mix-up at the end with Nacho Monreal but that would have been very harsh on him had it resulted in another own goal.

Cech aside though, there were other one-on-ones, Duncan Watmore found himself through on goal but his finish was tame, and just before Ramsey got that killer third goal, Bellerin lost Patrick van Aanholt but from more or less the same position Campbell scored from in the first half, he fizzed his shot inches, and I mean inches, over the bar.

It’s clear there’s some work to be done on the training ground because if a team like Sunderland, with all due respect, can open you up that frequently then there’s something fundamentally wrong. I know it was a new central midfield partnership, flanked by two wide men who haven’t played a great deal this season, so it is quite the mix-up but that’s something we really have to address ahead of Wednesday and for the foreseeable future because our options are pretty limited right now.

Can we also be worried about Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. Yesterday was a chance to impress, instead it was another game that more or less passed him by. He looks a shadow of himself, bereft of confidence and belief in his own ability, and his substitution on the hour mark was not just an inevitability but a necessity to try and change the dynamic of the game.

Afterwards, Arsene Wenger said:

It was our first game without the injured players and we absolutely had to win. We were a bit edgy, a bit nervous, in the first half but in the second half we played with more freedom, fluency and incisiveness which is how we won the game. It was a tough one and if you look at the results in the Premier League it was like that.

We played against a difficult team who were well organised and good on the break, so all the ingredients were there for a disappointing result. Because we hadn’t won for three games people would have said we were in a crisis, so it was important to get the win.

I’m not sure about Sunderland being good on the break, I think we made that rather easy for them as I’ve already said, and it’s hard to know where the line is between being glad that we won when playing poorly and being concerned about how poorly we played. I’m delighted we got the points, but the performance was far from convincing.

But first and foremost the fact we won again in the Premier League is a positive thing. With the other results in the league today any more dropped points would have felt even more painful, and perhaps the flaws in the way we played were so obvious it should be relatively straightforward to at least try and fix them.

The proof of that particular pudding will be evident on Wednesday as you can be sure Olympiacos will play like Sunderland, inviting us onto them knowing we’ve got to get goals, and looking to hit us on the break. We’ve got to be able to cope better than we did yesterday.

Still, three points are three points. By the time our next game comes around nobody will really care too much how we got them, only that we did.

Till tomorrow.