Match Day Thread Sunderland AFC v West Ham - Saturday 16th August 2025 - KO 15:00

Normally segmented up on the YouTube channel

 

MNF Jamie has us going down, Gary doesn't

 

He'll come around after a few matches

MNF analysis is from the year 2050 compared with MOTD.

Sunderland's analysis came second in their polls ahead of Man City and Tottenham. Viewers commented on us being a breath of fresh air. That said Man U v Arsenal won the poll

 

I actually preferred Rooney’s analysis in a way. Carra’s basically amounted to saying we won purely because of winning headers, whereas Rooney at least analysed some of our good play beyond the goals.

 

Keeping the points tally higher than the games played is important, but I believe we are capable of creating a little more wriggle room than that. I think we are going to be a team which is difficult to break down and have frightening pace up top. That's a good combination alongside the midfield that we have.

Just need another couple of pieces in the jigsaw.

 

If you thought West Ham were bad, you should have seen Everton tonight. All over the place and toothless up front.

 

I totally agree mate but my premise is survival first, I guess and the rest will follow.
Confidence will be the key to the season and how well the manager and coaches instill that confidence and belief will be crucial.
Before a ball was kicked I fancied us to finish about 13th or 14th (I am an eternal optimist) my Brother who is usually a little more pessimistic than me has put a bet on us finishing in the top 10 (he got 28/1) which I hope we do, but for me securing survival is just the next step on our incredible journey.
We have taken a lot of small steps (and some big strides) getting to where we are right now and for me I just see small benchmarks along the route to achieve greater things.
By the way has anybody else heard about this Mexican twitter account with millions of followers that has picked Sunderland as their team?

 

Carragher mentioned headers as they were crucial to the result.

As he says on the video, we won nine out of ten aerial duels, three of them resulted in the goals and at least one prevented then getting a goal back.

He also talks about how we dominated them in attack by pinning back their defence allowing Mayenda then Ballard to get in backed up by their teammates.

 

What I heard is that we’ve now got the whole of Mexico behind us! Weird.

 

I’ve just watched Access All Areas. I said earlier on this thread how at the beginning of the second half the team all came out together with Granit Xhaka talking to them all. There was a bit more on AAA where someone, out of sight and in the changing rooms, as they were walking out, but I assume it was Xhaka saying “come on, we gotta go, all together, let’s go”. It just shows that bit of leadership, saying basically we are one team.
This is what we need. It doesn’t matter what the half time or full time result is it builds togetherness.

 

I can understand why some (if not all) pundits has the 3 teams who came up will go back down. There is historical precedence and lets be honest, its the easiest answer to the question at this stage of the season. I'm prepared to give most of these commentators some latitude as their understanding of the clubs involved has a lazy and not thought through reasoning behind their opinion, its simply " well, thats whats been happening in the past" Let the club do the talking on the field, and lets see how their "opinions" change

 

I find it quite interesting that most pundits have us going g straight back down, yet are also saying we are trying something different and that its important the 3 promoted teams don't just keep going back down as its not great for the league especially with the money being spent

 

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"Dan Ballard (Sunderland): I was there at the Championship semi-final when he scored the goal to get them into the final, and he set the place alight. I can only imagine how he is feeling after his first Premier League goal. The place will have erupted and he was excellent for that."

 

RLB gets the Manager shout as well

 

he does

 

Enzo Le Fee dismisses suggestion of being frustrated



https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/s...e-dismisses-suggestion-frustrated-sunderland/

ENZO LE FEE insists his relationship with Regis Le Bris remains as close as ever despite his absence from the starting line-up for Sunderland’s Premier League return against West Ham….

“I think everyone wants to play [as a] starter, of course,” he said. “But sometimes it’s like this. Hopefully, he [Le Bris] trusts me for the season. If it wasn’t the case, I would be the first to be surprised. I know him, so I have to do the job for him and for the club as well. I think, last year, we did a really good job, but now we have to stay in this league, so everybody is in the same boat. We work together to be good.”

“Even if I had two minutes, I was ready to help the team,” said Le Fee. “Everybody has to have this mindset because it's never the first XI that will finish the season. We work for this, everyone. When the coach calls us to go in, we have to do the job to help the team to score. We did that for Wilson and I think this is a good example.”

“I think the biggest strength of the team is to be together,” said Le Fee. “For me, it’s a really good start for everyone because we scored three goals and the substitutions don’t change the game in a bad way. We tried to keep the team in a good way and we scored a third, so that’s a good example. Hopefully, it will be the same case every game. Yes, sometimes we have bad games, but that’s football. We can’t say we’ll have only good games. Everybody knows that football is like this, so we have to be together.”

 

Hopefully these rumours, around our players, will stop when the window closes ...

... they do us no good and it's 99% nonsense.

 

Delighted to see that from Enzo.

‘the substitutions didn’t change the team in a bad way’ is French broken English for ‘the bench is strong’ and **** yeah it is.

We brought Enzo le Fee off the ****ing bench man.

It’s crazy how well the clubs done.

We brought on Enzo, Alderete, Wilson and Rigg.

Stunning when you think about it.

 

It's absolute nonsense. ELF,and a number of others,are now PL players and their focus will be to work hard on the training ground,improve their play and get ready to take their chance on the pitch when it comes,as it surely will. Any talk of discontent is via sad journos looking for an angle.