MOWBRAY POST LEICESTER Tony Mowbray was happy with his team's performance against a very strong Leicester side, and believes that on another day Sunderland could have easily come away with at least a point... UNFORTUNATE TO LOSE “They give everything every game. There’s always two teams playing. I think we played against a team who are running away with the league, that’s twelve wins out of 13 games for them now. I think we gave them more than a good game and are really disappointed we didn’t score a goal tonight with the chances we had. We have to accept that Patto’s going to make a save or two because we’re playing against a top quality team, but generally on the balance of it I thought we were in the ascendancy a lot of the time. They isolated bits where they could get through us because they’ve got real high quality at the high end of the pitch who have played lots of Premier League games between them. We have to accept that they’ll create the odd chance. But the overall balance of the game, I thought we were on top for most of the time and looked the most threatening team.” NEED TO SCORE “You can’t win a game if you don’t score a goal, which is what happened tonight really. We had enough opportunities to score a few goals tonight. I mean, really good chances not half chances and we didn’t take them.” GOOD PERFORMANCE “I thought they were brilliant tonight. This is one of our best performances, up there with any of them. Even comparable to beating Southampton 5-0, I think the energy, effort, quality and desire were all there apart from the last little bit in the box. We have to accept that and move on. Nobody can tell me it wasn’t a really good performance and yet we will somewhere down the line get hit with the stats that we’ve lost three on the bounce. That’s okay because I do think it’s a bigger project than winning the odd game here and there. Over the 46 games we’re going to win a lot of games if we play that well." FANS "Let’s just look forward to the challenge of it every week and the supporters I know will stick with this young team. As long as they see the effort and fight and being courageous, they’ll stick with us.”
Just want to say, you were unlucky not to get something out of the game last night. By far the best side we have played all season. On another day we could have scored 4, but your keeper was excellent and did his job well. You had chances, but missed the target when well placed, again, on another day they could easily nestle in the top corner. Good luck for the rest of the season, I'm sure you'll be there or there about come May. Excellent travelling support, especially as it was on a Tuesday night and on Sky.
No need to be so sour! That is not a snide dig. It is a reasonable question as you did not quote another manager in that post. Where would I find the name of the manager you refer to?
Hard to fathom some of what is posted om this thread. Moving Mowbray on would be barmy in my opinion. If he were given the chop anytime soon we would rightly be thought of delusional. Just over a year in this league man, after years of downward spirals. A team considered by a lot as the most exciting in the league and who Leicester fans are saying we were the best they have played. If he goes any decent manager in work will think twice about joining a club so trigger happy. Likely end up shopping in the available bucket this early in the season. We already have a reputation for getting through managers. You can kiss goodbye to some of the best loan deals as well with Mowbray. His reputation as a coach for youngsters is top rank. Would be mind boggling to jump so quick.
ALS take on the striker situation ALS: SAFC Fanzine WHO SHOULD START UP FRONT? BY BEN HARDIE Sunderland have now gone 14 games this season without a recognised striker sticking the ball into the back of the net and with just one goal in our last three games the goals seem to be drying up. None of the three forwards who have played for Sunderland have scored so far and they’ve only contributed one assist between them. So who should be starting in that centre-forward role? MASON BURSTOW Burstow is the only striker out of the three to actually have a goal contribution. That came away to Sheffield Wednesday with a wonderful ball to Jack Clarke for our second of the night. He’s also currently our number one choice to start, so far appearing in the starting XI seven times. In many ways this makes sense, Mason has played games in the EFL before unlike Rusyn and Hemir with a previous spell at Charlton in League One. His performance against Sheffield Wednesday was fantastic and he probably should have scored. That does bring me to my main point about Burstow, surely someone else is due a chance now at starting? He’s played eight times and started seven of those. Four shots on target and no goals isn’t a great record for a striker. Don’t get me wrong, he has his moments but the best way to summarise him is he often looks a bit panicky in front of goal. How many times this season has he taken one touch too many before he can get a shot away? It’s been a good few. Eventually he will score of course if he keeps getting picked in the XI, and one of those chances will end up in the net. This would hopefully be a catalyst for him to bag a few in a row. However, how long can we wait for him to do this? It’s unfair on our other strikers, and especially Hemir who got dropped after only a few games for basically doing the same thing whilst in my opinion actually getting closer to being successful. Apparently Burstow has been good in training and this suggests a lack of confidence when he gets into a proper game. This makes it difficult when deciding what to do with him, if we drop him that could destroy his confidence like Hemir but also what option do we have other than dropping him? It sounds cruel because Burstow clearly tries, even so we have four defeats in our last six games and we need to start scoring more and to do that we need our strikers to start contributing. Also it’s not all on our strikers of course because our defence has at times been poor especially when it comes to set pieces. LUIS HEMIR Onto the next candidate now and it’s Hemir. In my opinion he was dropped prematurely and has been treated unfairly by Mowbray but at the same time he needs to apply himself more in games to try and convince the boss to put him in the starting XI since he was dropped. Although it wasn’t the best performance in the world, bringing him off after an hour in the opening game of the season when we needed a goal was a terrible decision and surely shot his confidence to bits. This also came off the back of a fantastic pre-season by Hemir so surely he deserved more than 59 minutes against Ipswich to show what he could do and then a scattering of a few minutes elsewhere. Of course, like Burstow he’s missed the odd sitter (that header away to QPR still annoys me) but the key difference is Burstow misses good chances after starting whereas Hemir misses them after playing for only a few minutes. Therefore I’m going to say Hemir should be starting ahead of Burstow, however I’ll expand on what else we should do striker wise when I talk about Rusyn. Hemir isn’t immune from criticism though, at best he can be accused of lacking confidence and at worst ‘not being bothered’ or ‘lazy’, I think the pendulum swings more towards the former. It often seems like he’s not putting his full effort in to win balls when he drops deep. Although he only featured for around a couple of minutes away to Leicester there were three balls aimed at him and he never jumped for one of them. Plus watching him for the U21s led many to conclude he wasn’t good enough, let’s be a bit lenient with the lad and assess his position. He’s moved from Portugal playing youth football to England hoping to play senior football and he finds himself once again playing for an U21 side. That would lead most players to become lacking in motivation. I’m not saying that not jumping for balls is completely excusable but only giving him two minutes when we need a goal is a bit of a joke in my opinion. Luis needs a proper run of games and has been treated unfairly by Mowbray compared to Burstow. NAZARIY RUSYN Rusyn is a very useful player to us, he can play as a centre-forward and can also play on both sides of the wing. Therefore, he should be played alongside Hemir for a few games. This would involve dropping Roberts out of the starting lineup. Let’s be totally honest, Roberts hasn’t been brilliant this season. He continues to give defenders some problems but he hasn’t scored or assisted once so far. Rusyn meanwhile hasn’t featured all that much since signing, he’ll be ready to prove himself and should be given a chance to do that. Nazariy has been called up twice for the Ukraine squad and did well in the Ukrainian Premier League which is of a pretty good standard and based on that a run out of more than 15-20 minutes in games is needed to truly assess how he will perform in this team. Of course we can’t see how he’s getting on in training but I can’t imagine he’s been dire. So in conclusion, Hemir and Rusyn need to be tried together for a few games. Burstow and Roberts should be dropped as neither has really been good enough to guarantee themselves a spot in the starting XI. We have more squad depth than last season so there’s no point in continuing to play players who haven’t been performing. This does require balance however as players need a run of games, but after seven starts and no goals from Burstow it’s time to give him some time to work on the training pitch a bit more and time for Hemir to be given another chance.
Feels like at times when we had fit Stewart last season we weren’t as dominant with the ball so he could actually make runs to stretch defences and it played into our hands. Now we have defences parked around their own box and I think they’re happy to play like that. They know our wingers don’t play to a striker and we don’t have the quality of Diallo in there anymore. It’s up to us to find a way start breaking teams down. Burstow hasn’t been great but the service is dreadful. I felt sorry for Hemir when I watched him earlier in the season he was making run after run just to be ignored.
i am wondering what has happened to these strikers TM was watching in training 'banging them in the net from everywhere', i would be watching how they get the ball and use it in training and putting that into practice in league games as currently these same players are not really getting the ball and using it...we seem to be trying to score without strikers again, and while it worked last season at times we now face teams who are preparing for us to take that route hence clarke and roberts hitting so many brick walls. we were happy chappies when seelt and triantis were mentioned because they brought something we badly lacked in defence...height, yet i think we have less height than last season (bar the odd games ballard and batth played together) and the sight of onien marking vestergaard was a joke and could easily been a penalty shout. TM, imho, needs to get back to playing with a striker and i do not care if he speaks english or not, he knows the rules of the game and knows how/when to make runs, get the english speaking lads to find him, i am not alone in seeing the runs some of the lads have made but been ignored...play to their strengths. now that is out of the way i want to make it clear it is not a rant but to me it is something we need to do, TM is a good manager and i am hopeful he is working on certain things now, onien is my fave player simply because he loves being here and he gives 120% and gives us a laugh but he is not a central defender, you need lads to get the jump on attackers and he is losing 6" to most, i do not really care how 'magical' they are with the ball at their feet, i want to see them stop goals...hemir looked decent, burstow worked hard but rusyn has looked the more likely to get on the score sheet although we really have not seen enough of the lads to make a judgement. this squad has enough about them to go up a couple more gears yet, as with every plan there will be adjustments made as we go and i honestly belive they will improve further, i am not holding out for promotion and think another season and another couple of windows will help so unless it goes to complete batsh1t TM should at least get the season, if not then a change would have to be before the window not in the last two days of it.
It’s definitely the service, or lack of should I say, that’s the issue for the strikers imo. I could understand if they were fluffing chance after chance but they’re just not getting a sniff.
Mowbray has a lot of credit in the bank and rightly so, but there will be a judgement day for him if we dont get promoted/improve on last season. If we dont start scoring and winning soon, then 40+k home and sell outs away, will not tolerate mid-table. We need a promotion and consolidation in PL - his track record is not those.
Said it before - I don't think Speakman/KLD saw TM as anything more than a steady hand to keep us up last season, with the plan of bringing in a young, foreign coach in the summer (hence the Farioli links). We/TM massively overachieved (also the fact the division was poor last year) and somehow found ourselves in the play offs. As soon as the Farioli links surfaces, 99% fans were up in arms and the club felt they couldn't sack Mowbray. I don't think they will take too much encouragement to move ahead with the aforementioned plan.
In my opinion our forward play is too condensed because Clarke and Roberts carry the ball from out wide into the area, often the six yard box. On one occasion, at Stoke, Clarke went passed his marker, to the byeline and almost to the goalpost before he released the ball, quite impressive but ... ... there was a wall of players and impossible to pick anyone one. It happened on quite a few occasions, in the last two games, with Roberts as guilty as Clarke. It's amazing to watch them but it's all so congested that strikers have little chance of getting a shot away. Just my opinion, I'll double check when I watch the match again later.
This is what I have seen on FBook today and to be honest I despair at some of our so called fans We are light years away from the Premier League. Players like Patterson, Hume, Ballard, Cirkin, Neil, Ekwah, Roberts and Clarke will be sold in January or July 2024. We aren’t going up this season. We’ve gone backwards obviously. Below 6th is not progress. It’s a failure. We will finish 8th ish. We’ll keep unveiling profit players under this regime. We’ll have a massive bank account in the Championship for at least 10 years. The fans will turn up, as we are easily led. The owners will spend nothing. They’ll assert strip and cream off the top. We’ll never challenge the Mags for 30 years. Small club mentality. But we’ll carry on supporting Sunderland. The owners have found a cash cow.
Agree with all that. Feel we were too hard on Hemir and go the opposite way with Burstow. I'd love to see Hemir and Rusyn start together and would be comfortable dropping Roberts for it but I'm not holding my breath. Not that I'm adamant about playing 2 up top but I would like to see someone else get a chance.
These people need to completely forget about Newcastle, that rivalry is dead and buried ... ... or just go and support them. Sunderland, as things stand, will never compete with the likes of Man City, it's another sport entirely. I'm just happy to see Sunderland entertaining the supporters and winning praise from everyone ... ... worth every penny imo.
