And the unwanted run showed no real signs of ending yesterday.





Three times now, Arsenal have travelled to the Stadium of Light as last-day opponents to come, see and conquer on the eve of their summer holidays.

Some things are different, however. The nail-biting fear of relegation in the last 90 minutes of the campaign was absent, for example, as was the shame and humiliation of the last rites being applied to another shameful relegation.

For this was a day when the future seemed bright, even if Arsenal did put Sunderland in the shades.

Intriguingly, the result of yesterday's game was almost a side issue for so many in the vast crowd.

Arsenal were expected to win; which they duly did. Sunderland were expected to be a whole lot better than they were at Bolton; which they duly were.

But the sell-out crowd came not so much in expectation of seeing a Sunderland win, but to celebrate their club's top-flight survival.

And if that seems an unambitious objective on their part, well, clearly you haven't lived through the devastating 15-point and 19-point relegations that so many of them have.

They wanted to pay tribute to the players of course, but not as much as they wanted to hail the chief architects of the new era - Niall Quinn and Roy Keane.

And the terraces are buzzing even more about what Sunderland might do next season than what they achieved in the current one.

It is a long time since there was such optimism or excitement around the place.

Quinn and his consortium have provided the all-important backing, but it is Keane who has given the club direction.

Rival manager Arsene Wenger was the first to acknowledge: "When you come up into the Premier League with as little experience as he had and manage to keep a club up, then you have to say congratulations to him. It is remarkable."

Everyone knows the Sunderland manager's mind is turning towards the future, but he still wanted to end the season on a positive note, and as a result he made five changes to the side which lost so poorly at Bolton the previous week.

Goalkeeper Marton Fulop got his moment in the shop window, and Dwight Yorke was given what could be a sentimental farewell appearance as the manager went for a 4-5-1 formation.

That meant Chopra dropped to the bench, alongside Liam Miller and Danny Higginbotham, who had also started in the Bolton Wanderers reverse.

Two of their other team-mates weren't even that lucky - Kieran Richardson and Daryl Murphy didn't feature in the squad.

Grant Leadbitter and Carlos Edwards came in to fill the resulting gaps.

The change of personnel sparked an immediate response, and Sunderland went for goal in the first 12 seconds with Carlos Edwards arrowing a bold shot from distance to Lukasz Fabianski's right-hand corner, which the keeper blocked and gathered at the second attempt.

Arsenal hit back a minute later through Eboue's surging run down the right flank and low shot which Fulop clung on to as an incident-packed first half hour unfolded.