Yay !

1 - 1 - BFG

Pathetic. A free kick which is closer than a corner, arsenal leave a forest player with a free run right on top of Ospina who heads in completely unchallenged. The 2 arsenal players in the wall clearly play him onside.

What on earth are arsenal doing. There is no plan, no clue and no accountability for the unacceptable way we defend set pieces.

Now we score a set piece! Per prodding one home 1-1

Jon Moss. Sunderland. Join the dots.

I would credit the opposition for a clever set piece myself.

Ooh should have been 2-1

Well it is now.

And a nice goal at that ...

Very much deserved, Ospina had kept us in it with a few good saves prior.

Need to drastically improve second half.

Of the current 18 Premiership referees seven came up through Lancashire, Cheshire and Manchester football, and four through Yorkshire. The remaining seven come from Birmingham (2), Wiltshire (2), and one each from Northumberland, Leicestershire and Berkshire/Bucks. So, not one of them came up through the London FA or the adjoining county FAs, and not one was born in or very near to London - Graham Scott of Oxford being the closest. A remarkably unbalanced state of affairs in the running of the game.

Even assuming they do their best to exercise professional judgement in as honest a way as possible, refs are only too human, and will surely have from their backgrounds personal likes and dislikes of certain football clubs, probably developed in childhood? We all know how London is not beloved by people from the midlands and north, so it is quite possible there is some institutional bias against the capital's teams. When you consider the age of most of the Premiership men in black, Arsenal was the predominant London team in their formative years, so it is feasible our club attracts a disproportionate level of wrong decisions, even compared to other London sides. In years to come Chelsea may have that honour!

Papers say we are close to signing Jonny Evans for 25 million. I know we are desperate for defensive reinforcements but that doesn't seem very forward thinking signing given he's 30 and hasn't set the world alight. It's probably arsene trying to wind up that new scout.

Oh did you see the comments Arsene made about that new Sven bloke By the way? He didn't come across as bitter at all did he. Pretty much said the appointment was needless as we know all the players in Europe anyway.

I think it is a no brainer. I understand the risk of his injury record but we can't lose Jack for free. This isn't like Özil or Sanchez. Jack wants to play for us. With Jack playing as he is and with the protection of a 3/4 year deal then he is a £30m+ player.

Also, funny how Wenger has been moaning for years about better protection for players, but I saw as soon as Pep started asking for protection for players like De Bruyn the press were all over it agreeing with him. The only response Wenger ever got was to toughen our players up and deal with these sorts of tactics. I think we all knew at the time that it would need a serious injury to an england/media favourite for anyone to start noticing.

More eloquently the same point I've made on here for year - I remember having discussions with Harlow about it. The PGMOL has been run out of Manchester and disproportionally full of refs from Lancs, Cheshire & Manc for a couple of decades now, with a likewise high % from Yorkshire. Is it really likely that those three counties are really twice as good at producing referees than the rest of England and Wales combined? I've read before that there is a significant regional divide withing the PGMOL, and refs often feel pressured to relocate to one of the above areas in order to get to ref in the top flight.

Quite apart from any accusations of bias, that regional distrubution can't be right. The last ref based in the south East in the top flight bar the aforementioned Graham Scott was Steve Bennett who retired 8 years ago.

15 mins of total domination from arsenal, not a single shot to show for it. Forest make the first foray in to our half and very nearly score.
Arsenal in a nutshell

Who remembers that 5th round tie away at Forest in 79 the comms mentioned. I think the most nerve wracking 20 minutes of Sportsnight I ever saw.