Ashburton Grove. The Gunning Hawk. Goonerholic. At last, a weekend with real football to look forward to. Perhaps it is more accurate to say I am looking forward to running into some friends old and new on Sunday. Much is in the pipeline, and with good luck and a following wind the Arsenal will gild the day with a quality performance and three points. Sunderland is one of those games. It doesn’t set the pulses racing, probably because we don’t have a history of memorable encounters. Even to Gooners of my vintage talk about the mackems and we recall an FA Cup semi-final defeat in 1973, Malcolm Macdonald making his first trip back to the north-east in 1976, and a goal-less draw in a biting cold wind in May 1991 as we closed in on our tenth title.
We didn’t win any of them! When we met at the Grove in March an Arsenal side at the beginning of a crisis of confidence, that can be said yet to be over, had to settle for a point from another goal-less meeting. This weekend the team news is mixed. Le Grove. East Lower. Arseblog.