Full-time: Sunderland 0 Arsenal 2

SUNDERLAND were not quite as bad as the shambles at St Mary’s but it will feel just as bad for the Sunderland players tonight after gifting Arsenal victory at the Stadium of Light.

After last week’s embarrassing capitulation at Southampton, Black Cats fans must have feared the worst when a horrendous blunder from Wes Brown gifted Alexis Sanchez the opening goal after half an hour.

But a repeat of the horror show never materialised – until the dying seconds of the game when Vito Mannone suffered another moment to forget.

After the lacklustre Gunners had struggled to make inroads to the Sunderland goal, Will Buckley decided to play a silly back pass to Mannone from inside his own penalty area with Arsenal players lurking.

The Italian goalkeeper was taken by surprise and got tangled up in his own feet, slipping to allow Sanchez to hit his second to leave Poyet and his players deflated – again.

If Newcastle claim a surprise win at Tottenham on Sunday, Sunderland will be in the bottom three and Poyet must somehow eradicate the constant errors which are costing his team dearly.

Considering Arsenal had won just one of their previous seven matches, they were never posed any real problems by Sunderland, particularly after Brown’s horror moment.

Confidence was understandably fragile in the Sunderland ranks in the wake of the 8-0 thumping at Southampton and that took another battering just before the half hour.

When a ball dropped on to the chest of Brown, the former Manchester United defender then attempted a back pass just inside his own half. He hardly connected and Sanchez nipped in and had just the keeper to beat. He delicately chipped Mannone to put the Gunners ahead.

Sunderland never really regained their composure for the rest of the half, but showed a resilience defensively to prevent Arsenal from adding a second which could have opened the floodgates again.

In fact, despite plenty possession, Mannone was not tested seriously again until the second goal. Sunderland had to wait until the 51st minute for their first effort on target, with Wojciech Szczesny diving to his left to hold a downward header from Jack Rodwell.

After that, though, Sunderland gave the ball away cheaply on a number of occasions in their own half, but were let off the hook by Arsenal’s failure to test Mannone. Poyet attempted to salvage something by throwing on Jozy Altidore and Jordi Gomez for the last 18 minutes. Altidore wasted two half chances and the second was a complete miss-hit of a volley.

Sunderland, who have now won just one of their opening nine league games, could quite easily have got something in the end, but lacked the spark to unlock the visitors’ defence.

And then Buckley and Mannone combined to gift Sanchez the late second.

SUNDERLAND: Mannone; Vergini, O'Shea, Brown, Van Aanholt; Cattermole; Buckley, Rodwell (Gomez 72), Larsson, Johnson (Altidore 72); Fletcher (Wickham 50). Subs: Pantilimon (gk), Bridcutt, Reveillere, Mavrias.

ARSENAL: Szczesny; Chambers, Monreal, Mertesacker, Gibbs (Bellerin 72); Arteta (Ramsey 86), Flamini; Oxlade-Chamberlain (Rosicky 90), Sanchez, Cazorla; Welbeck. Subs: Martinez, Podolski, Walcott, Campbell.