Nope! And nope! Would make my season ticket money for almost nothing! I gig most Saturday nights so 5:30s would kill that
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/s...s-view-brian-brobbey-sunderland-draw-arsenal/ ROBIN ROEFS knows all about Brian Brobbey’s goalscoring prowess – but even Sunderland’s goalkeeper was amazed to see his team-mate hook home Saturday’s dramatic stoppage-time equaliser against Arsenal. With Sunderland trailing 2-1 to the league leaders, the clock had ticked beyond the 94th minute when Dan Ballard nodded Trai Hume’s cross towards Brobbey at the Stadium of Light. Not only did the second-half substitute have to outmuscle Gabriel – something pretty much no one has been able to do this season – but he also had to twist his body and raise his foot to a seemingly unnatural height in order to flick the ball home... “I know what Brian is like,” said Roefs, who, like Brobbey, moved to Wearside from the Netherlands in the summer. “He showed it in Holland, and he also showed it for the national team. He’s showing his qualities here now too. He’s so strong with and without the ball as well. He keeps two or three defenders busy, so he’s a really good player. I still couldn’t really see how he scored it though. But I saw it in the back of the net and then started celebrating.” ...Trailing 2-1, and with the Gunners seemingly on top, it would have been easy for Sunderland’s players to have thrown in the towel. That is not the mentality Regis Le Bris has instilled into his squad, though, so while Arsenal might have been the best team in the country in the opening three months of the season, Roefs and his team-mates always felt they were capable of turning things back around. “I think we genuinely did believe we could do it because we were really pushing and we were dangerous in the attack,” said Roefs. “I think they felt our pressure, so I absolutely believed in it until the end.” Brobbey’s goal came in the fourth minute of stoppage time, and even then, Sunderland still needed a dramatic 97th-minute block from Dan Ballard to prevent Mikel Merino from restoring Arsenal’s lead. The Gunners were uncomfortable for long periods, though, meaning Roefs felt his side definitely deserved to take something from the game. “What a game,” he said. “I think we absolutely deserved the point, so it’s nice to have got it. I think we did a good job. We were really aggressive. We were aggressive in the low block, and we made it difficult for them. I think we did a great job.”
amount of post match content ive consumed is absurd whilst im surprised im not actually, i backed us for top 10 at 33/1, i felt like the odds were insane. The quality of the recruitment is absurd, weve got internationals everywhere, weve got players who have been and should be playing in Europe all over the pitch. Weve got a manager who proven himself to be tactically flexible and in my mind is the first manager since poyet where you can see the managers method on the pitch. That Granit signing changed everything, the Brobbey interview confirms it. I dont know where we'll finish but if we stay up the short term will be the best its been to support the lads since Reid imo.
Has it ever been like this at the Emirates ... ... never when I've been. https://x.com/i/status/1987948471630942291
Arsenal’s last clean-sheet record ended in 1903 – meet the Glossop tripe-dresser who Dan Ballard emulated Dan Ballard ended Arsenal's clean-sheet streak on Saturday - a record last witnessed over 120 years ago Getty Images; Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images By Michael Walker Nov. 10th, 2025 Updated 8:37 am GMT Before he was a professional footballer, Irvine Thornley was a tripe dresser in his father’s Derbyshire butcher’s shop. Before he was sold to Manchester City in 1904 for a near-world-record transfer fee of £800, and before he won his sole England cap in 1907, Thornley played for Glossop in England’s old Second Division. Before he departed his hometown, Thornley left an everlasting mark on Woolwich Arsenal. More than a century on, that mark ties him to Dan Ballard and the Sunderland-Arsenal Premier League match at the Stadium of Light on Saturday. Some explanation may be required. First, tripe: it is the edible stomach lining of sheep and cattle. ‘Dressed’ tripe was a washed and cut version — a higher standard. In Italian, it is ‘trippa’; in Spanish, ‘tripas’. At the start of the 20th century, it was a common product on sale in England. Second, Woolwich Arsenal: from 1891 to 1914 this was the name of the club who are now simply Arsenal. Previously known as Dial Square, they were based in the Woolwich district of south-east London, before moving north of the River Thames to the Highbury area. Third, Glossop: this is a small town to the east of Manchester. In the 1890s and early 1900s, Glossop thrived on its cotton mill. It was home to at least three football clubs: Glossop Villa, Glossop North End and Glossop FC. Born in the town, Thornley played for all of them in his career. He was a prolific goalscorer and was picked by the last of those clubs to face ‘Woolwich Reds’, as some newspapers dubbed them, in the sixth game of the 1903-04 season. The Second Division table showed that Glossop were bottom at the time and Arsenal top, and the big crowd cramming into the small ground in the Derbyshire hills expected to see — and did see — the visitors dominate and score freely. Led by striker Bill Gooing, Arsenal took a three-goal lead. The third, scored by Gooing, was a header from a corner. Nicolas Jover, Arsenal’s set-piece coach, might enjoy that. The two points for a win, as it was then, were assured. It would be nine games for Arsenal without conceding; they had scored 26 goals of their own in those matches. It sounds familiar. “There is a peculiar interest attached to an undefeated team,” began The Athletic News (no relation) match report, “but when to the undefeatedness — if I may coin a clumsy word — we add the fact that the particular team has not had a single goal scored against them, the peculiar interest amounts to a downright fascination. To think that Woolwich, up to Saturday, had played seven and a half hours and kept a clean sheet is to think of something at once great and glorious.” Arsenal were coasting towards the final whistle, but as the report states: “The reader may think that all was now over, but it was not.” Glossop came again. They won a corner of their own, which was “finely placed into a ruck of men. A head was seen to appear above the rest, Thornley’s, and the next moment Glossop spectators were "beside themselves", I think the phrase is.” Arsenal’s goalkeeper Jimmy Ashcroft had at last been beaten. Ashcroft played for four years without interruption and was the first Arsenal player to be capped by England, but Thornley had put the ball beyond him, and Arsenal’s run, lasting from April 10th to October 10th, was over. The goal, coming the day before Thornley’s 20th birthday, was one of 42 that he scored in 79 appearances for Glossop FC. The following year came his transfer to Manchester City, where Thornley was top scorer and captain and stayed for eight years before moving to South Shields in the north-east of England. South Shields were a progressive club who were in the Second Division in the first season after the First World War. It is just six miles from there to Sunderland’s present-day Stadium of Light home ground. Thornley settled in South Shields. When he died, in 1955, his funeral was held at the West Road cemetery in Newcastle. It is just over two miles from St James’ Park. As all at Arsenal knew, that was where Nick Woltemade had been the most recent player to breach their defence, in September. So maybe there was something in the north-eastern air when Mikel Arteta’s league leaders ran out into a surprisingly balmy Wearside Saturday night, and so it proved. After 36 minutes of cagey huff-and-puff, Arsenal’s clean-sheet record was spoiled again in game nine of their run, though, as in 1903, their undefeatedness in that stretch was to remain intact. There had been an understandable focus on Sunderland’s new captain, Granit Xhaka, in the build-up. Xhaka was facing a former club where he spent seven years and had also been captain. Less discussed was another former Arsenal player in the home team, Dan Ballard. The Sunderland captain talks leadership, Arteta, Arsenal, the day he was booed off at the Emirates and his new side's aspirations. Ballard was at the London club from the age of eight until an initial release at 14. At 16, he was telephoned by Arsenal’s academy director Andries Jonker with an invitation to appear in a one-off trial match, where Ballard shone. He returned, spent time in the youth team with the likes of Bukayo Saka and went on loans to Swindon Town (League Two), Millwall (Championship) and Blackpool (League One). You have to be a Champions League-level defender to get into the Arsenal first team and Ballard wasn’t, not then. In the summer of 2022, aged 22, he joined the youthful squad being assembled on a budget by Sunderland. The initial fee was under £1m. Sunderland were in the Championship then, newly promoted from League One. They were still there three full seasons on — well, almost three full seasons. In May, in the second leg of a play-off semi-final against Coventry City, Ballard rose at the Roker End — in the last seconds of added time in extra time — and headed an equaliser that meant a 3-2 aggregate win. The Stadium of Light nearly melted. Sunderland have been on an eight-year journey beneath the Premier League – they are just one game away from a return after last-gasp winner Promotion followed. Ballard had written his name into Sunderland’s history. There is a huge mural of that moment against Coventry on a building across the River Wear from the stadium. Now he was about to sign ‘Dan Ballard’ across Arsenal’s 2025-26 season. First, on what was an occasion as much as a match, came an observance of Remembrance. Plenty of fans are uneasy about the modern ‘Poppyfication’ of football, but this was sincere and flawless. It made you think of Thornley. He fought in the First World War, as “a gunner” in the Royal Artillery Regiment. His brother, John, who signed for Manchester United but did not make the first team, also fought. He was killed in Flanders, Belgium, in 1918. The poppy as a symbol of Remembrance comes from the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’. More than a century on, one wonders what the Thornley brothers make of this. Clubs in English football marked Remembrance Sunday by playing the ‘Last Post’, laying wreaths, and observing a minute's silence Back in Glossop, the same applies to Thornley’s mill-owning club chairman, Samuel Hill-Wood. As cotton profits reduced, in 1921, Hill-Wood sold up and moved south to London. He became a regular at Arsenal’s new stadium, Highbury. In 1927, he joined the board. Soon, he was club chairman. The Hill-Woods continued to run Arsenal throughout the 20th century. Peter Hill-Wood was chairman as recently as 2013. He died seven years ago, when Ballard was in their academy. He is a natural defender, Ballard, but as he has shown before, he can also be a danger in the opposition box. On Saturday night, David Raya, a worthy successor to Ashcroft, discovered that. Raya had not been beaten for 812 minutes, but when Ballard took an assured first touch and then a devastating second, he was left helpless by the explosive power of the shot. It was a finish that Thornley would have nodded at approvingly; Arteta said that he felt “a pain in my tummy” at a record lost. He was smiling as he spoke, though. Saturday night’s table still showed Arsenal six points clear at the top and Arteta knew this had been a test. Sunderland are unbeaten at the Stadium of Light since their return to the Premier League. Substitute Brian Brobbey’s sharp, acrobatic stoppage-time equaliser was deserved. There was still time for Arsenal to win the match, only for Ballard to produce another illustration of his abilities, blocking a goal-bound Mikel Merino shot. Ballard the Bollard, as his head coach, Regis Le Bris, recognised. “I was surprised when I started here about their attitudes to defend the goal,” Le Bris said. “Here in Sunderland we have many players who would give their life to keep a clean sheet or to stop a shot. It’s a question of mentality, it’s a question of technique as well, and, for example, Trai (Hume), Ballard, Luke (O’Nien) are really good for that.” It is defiance that Arsenal defenders understand. Their record has been broken. They have not been. They will go again. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6791516/2025/11/10/arsenal-defensive-record-glossop/
We have soooooooooooooooo many teams rattled, they all expected us to struggle and just get hammered each week, we are having a go. and this is worrying teams, On mark pougatch's tiktok he had a go at Arsenal fan saying we deserved the draw, nothing lucky or "undeserved" about it all we, he hopes we continue this and are in the PL for a long time
I’m not sure how this lad managed to get a ticket but it’s a decent video, especially of the pre match display.
Funny how the Arse nal and supporters are moaning about us moving the hoardings to stop there long throws then how come Nordi could do his long throw ins. Excuse after excuse.
Yeah me too, he was saying the other week that he's not allowed to do them because of Premiere League copyright
Mukiele can put a long throw in without needing as big a run up as Rice. I bet they measured the run up needed in training and made sure that was the space! I say that he hardly takes a run up does he? Genius move, didn't we do it another time? Playoffs maybe?
