An ugly goal to take an ugly win from a pretty ugly game. Maybe the current Arsenal team are learning how to get the job done in the Barclays Premier League after all.

You don’t get points for style in English football. Arsenal have found to their cost during the last eight empty years that substance is all that ultimately matters. Here at St James’ Park, on a rather disappointing afternoon, they showed some of that at least.

On a beautiful sunny day, we came to this corner of the North East in search of something classical. Arsenal always try to play, of course, and with Newcastle in rare form and fresh from scoring eight in their last two games, this was a game that seemed set up for adventure. As it was, we got a pretty horrible, niggly scrap.

The two managers, Alan Pardew and Arsene Wenger, don’t like each other much and their respective teams played in exactly that spirit. It was a shame but Arsenal will not care. Results like this, on days like this, in places like this, win you championships and Wenger’s team head in to the new year as league leaders.

Wenger isn’t a man to find beauty in attrition. He likes his patterns to be intricate. Even he, though, must have taken some satisfaction from the winning goal. It was, after all, the type of goal he has grown more accustomed to seeing his team concede than score during some difficult recent years.

Whether Arsenal should have been awarded the crucial free-kick in the first place is a moot point. This was a pretty physical game and on the whole Arsenal competed manfully. But Santi Cazorla did seem to fall a little easily under the gentlest of contacts from Cheick Tiote in the 65th minute and referee Lee Probert’s decision to blow his whistle proved decisive.

From that point on, Newcastle should have done better. Theo Walcott’s free-kick was chipped more in hope than anything else into the penalty area but Olivier Giroud was able to steal between defenders and glance the ball down and beneath goalkeeper Tim Krul.

Giroud has had something of a rough trot recently — having not scored for seven games — and was beginning to look under a little pressure for his place from the fit-again Lukas Podolski.

The big Frenchman still looks a fraction short of the required quality for a team with title aspirations but his courage and his honesty can never be questioned and here he got his reward for an afternoon of hard toil.

The 27-year-old actually should have put the game to bed four minutes later, somehow managing to screw a hurried shot backwards across goal from just five yards after Walcott had twice been denied, first by Krul and then by Mathieu Debuchy on the goal-line. There, in an instant, was evidence of Giroud’s apparent limitations.

From that point on, it was all Newcastle. The home team were never cowed by Arsenal’s technical quality and put them under severe pressure in the final 20 minutes. On another day, the quality of the home side’s delivery into the penalty area would have been rewarded with an equaliser.

Here, though, the Arsenal central defensive pairing of Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny stood tall and strong, even when Krul chose to advance forward at a couple of late set-pieces.

Arsenal goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny was never really called upon to make a telling save during the late barrage and that said much for the work of those in front of him and for the fact that the ball never really bounced Newcastle’s way.

‘We got everything going our way against Stoke on Boxing Day,’ reflected Pardew ruefully. ‘Here, though, we didn’t really get anything.’ Ultimately, Szczesny’s only harum-scarum moment came when his own clearance struck Loic Remy in the face with nine minutes left and rebounded a foot or so wide of his right-hand post.

That apart, there were a couple of quick, direct runs from substitute Hatem Ben Arfa but both ended in disappointment as the Frenchman made poor decisions.

At times, things did threaten to boil over in the second period. Mathieu Flamini — so important when Arsenal don’t have the ball — clattered in to Ben Arfa while Tomas Rosicky left his mark on Yohan Cabaye. In the first half, Giroud was booked for chopping down Tiote. To his credit, Pardew didn’t complain. He commented later that it was a ‘fair game’.

Wenger, for his part, will only be encouraged. Having been blown away at Manchester City before Christmas, this nevertheless looks like an Arsenal team that will not be messed around.

A dull but committed home draw with Chelsea and a win at West Ham had already suggested that over the holiday period and this game provided further evidence to promote the theory. Newcastle could have taken the lead just before half-time as Debuchy’s header struck the underside of the bar and then Jack Wilshere on the line. Over the piece, they can certainly count themselves unlucky to have lost.

Wenger, though, senses opportunity this season. ‘This is a special team,’ said the Arsenal manager. ‘We have the resilience and mentality we need.’ Time will tell if he is right but this certainly indicated that he may well be.

—Daily Mail