https://www.sunderlandecho.com/spor...nny-higginbotham-sunderland-liverpool-5429248
NBC pundits Tim Howard and Danny Higginbotham have heaped praise on
Sunderland for their gutsy performance against
Liverpool at Anfield on Wednesday evening...
Speaking on NBC after the final whistle, Howard said: “Well, you know, you have to credit
Sunderland. We talked at half-time, it was 0-0, it was nervy. Sunderland get the goal to go ahead. Even then, defensively, Liverpool didn't look great on that play.
“But yes, they're at home - I talked about the Anfield crowd - they're going to will their team to push forward. Sunderland at that stage, even though they're a newly promoted team, and they've done really well, this is still a gimme for them. So they had the ability to go 1-0 ahead and say, ‘Okay, well, we're going to hold out here, and if we win, we win. If we draw, we draw’. But that's still a good result.”
Higginbotham agreed, adding: “Yeah, and one of the biggest things you see, you saw the players walking off the pitch then for Sunderland - obviously got the smiles on their faces - but then you look at [Granit] Xhaka, there's the disappointment that they didn't win at Anfield. And that tells you where they are at the moment. And I think what we've seen with a number of teams this season is they prioritised defending. Sunderland are key to that. You look at all the players playing in this team for Sunderland... I'm sure you've played with some wonderful defenders, but you also played with some defenders that didn't necessarily want to defend. They wanted to go forward.
“This Sunderland team, they love to defend. They love to defend. They love to put their body on the line. You see all the different players for them, and they have adjusted to the Premier League unbelievably well. I think what sets them apart from a number of teams in the Premier League is that they still value defending, and there's a number of teams that don't. So Sunderland are going to be very, very difficult to beat because of the manner in which they go about games.”