Olivier Giroud came off the bench to score twice in five second-half minutes as Arsenal maintained their English Premier League title challenge with a comfortable 4-1 win at struggling Sunderland.
Alexis Sanchez scored the Gunners’ other two goals to make it 14 games unbeaten for Arsene Wenger’s side, who would have won with even more to spare had they taken all their chances in a dominant display.
Sunderland momentarily looked capable of springing a surprise when they levelled through Jermain Defoe’s 65th-minute penalty.
Photo: AP
However, their unlikely comeback was short-lived as Giroud claimed his first Premier League goals since May to herald a decisive burst of three goals in 6 minutes, 30 seconds from the visitors.
The Frenchman had been on the pitch for just 60 seconds when he volleyed home a cross from Kieran Gibbs to restore Arsenal’s lead in the 71st minute.
The 30-year-old secured victory with a looping near-post header from a Mesut Ozil corner soon after, before Sanchez kept his composure to add a close-range fourth after Gibbs’s shot came back off the post.
Arsenal provisionally moved three points clear at the league summit ahead of the rest of yesterday’s league games.
Defeat left winless Sunderland bottom of the table and with two points from 10 games, they have matched Manchester City’s unwanted 1995 record for the worst start to a Premier League season.
Manager David Moyes is still searching for a first league victory since succeeding Sam Allardyce in July.
Sunderland were fortunate not to concede half a dozen goals by half-time as they were left chasing shadows by Arsenal’s slick passing and movement.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with