Arsenal handed title advantage but Man City and Sunderland show the right way to do a 0-0 | OneFootball

If ever there was a night to highlight how different 0-0 draws can be it was this one.

Sunderland v Man City finished as the third goalless draw from the four Premier League games on New Year’s Day. It is to be hoped that isn’t an omen for 2026 as a whole, but if we do have to have more 0-0s than please can they at least be more like this one than the others?

We truly hope Brentford-Spurs ends the year still top of the sh*tlist as the worst Premier League game of 2026 because otherwise something really has gone badly wrong.

But this one? At Sunderland? This was a true Barclays heritage goalless draw. This was a game that happened to end as a goalless draw rather than a game where one or both teams willed it to be so, and that’s a wholly different beast.

Of course City had the better chances. But this was no bus-parking expedition from a Sunderland side who defended stoutly but attacked with relish when the opportunity arose. And they really could have emerged with all three points, and you’d not have begrudged them it.

Sunderland have, obviously, spent the entire season defying expectations. But even then this was the point where it was supposed to start going awry. Against Manchester City and without a bunch of key players otherwise engaged at AFCON.

But not a single bit of it. Sunderland were the better side in the first half and held out gamely in front of a passionate crowd in the second to extend their unbeaten home record upon return to the Premier League to 10 games.

The only other side without a home defeat this season is Arsenal, who now sit four points clear at the halfway stage of the season. The highest praise for Sunderland comes from the fact that in ticking off two games against them in the first half of the campaign City haven’t had a notably easier time of it than Arsenal had in having to deal with Aston Villa twice.

City’s eight-game winning run is over and, while they were not at their best, there was also a ‘one of those nights’ vibe here. The stalemates at Liverpool and Brentford felt like games where wider issues of fixture congestion and repeat opponents and fatigue and the whole approach in this country to football at this time of year came into play.

This was just a good game of football between two good sides that happened to end up without a goal.

City were far better after the break, but never did it feel inevitable that the Sunderland dam would burst.

We are staunch fans of Josko Gvardiol and his attack-minded defender antics, but it’s still a win for any side coming up against a team featuring Erling Haaland, Phil Foden, Rayan Cherki, Savinho and Bernardo Silva if it’s the introduction of Gvardiol that proves the biggest attacking threat.

Sunderland coped with all City could throw at them, with Robin Roefs’ burgeoning reputation getting another boost here.

There were moments of fortune of course, notably when Jeremy Doku – another handy second-half sub to highlight just what Sunderland were up against – had a shot blocked from close range.

But this was not a City performance that will please Pep Guardiola. Not only has a significant advantage been handed to Arsenal at a significant moment in the title race, but he also lost the battle for how this game would be played.

It was a battle he was never likely to win; a manager who abhors chaos had little choice but to try and embrace it against Sunderland and their support.

Yet it would be wrong to dismiss what Sunderland are doing as the product of mere heart-on-their-sleeve endeavour. They have that in spades, clearly, but so much more. Expertly led and steered by Granit Xhaka, this is a team with plenty of smarts.

There is such a clear lesson here for other promoted teams. Sunderland have embraced promotion entirely while also completely understanding and accepting that they would need a whole load of new players doing things vastly differently to the way they were 12 months ago.

The journey is an astonishing one. Their final game of 2024 was a 1-0 defeat at Stoke. Their first game of 2026 a blood-and-thunder draw against the most successful English club of the age.

They are visibly enjoying it and there is going to be much more to come.