Sebastian Larsson says if Sunderland were to lose to Arsenal, then at least it was by Thierry Henry's intervention.

Larsson, who played with the Frenchman during his own spell with the Gunners, admitted there was an inevitability about his intervention.

He said: "We would have liked no-one to have won the game for them, but I suppose if anyone was going to do it, it was going to be him.

"It was his last league game, so it was probably written in the stars. From their point of view, fair play to him for getting the goal, but it's obviously a sickener conceding that late.

"You could see in the last 15 minutes that we were really tired and we couldn't really get forward as much as we did earlier.

"But then again, for all the possession they had, I don't think they caused us any problems whatsoever, and they were two really bad goals for us to concede, unfortunately."