This Sunderland team. We can play crap at times. But what's different is that we can be awful now but can inject that bit of quality out of nowhere and claim points that we probably, on the balance of play, don't deserve. Other teams will be aware of this, which must niggle away at them, put them off their stride. In the past, if we played badly, 9.5 times out of 10 we lost.
Fantastic to see Dion Sanderson crying as well after the second went in. Dry your eyes sunshine. Couldn’t have happened to a better person.
spot on almost entirely. I also think the other mitigating factor for Clarke is he’s played non stop for us after several years of little football. It’s natural he’s tired and I hope they give him a good 10 days off the training pitch.
Pritchard was poor by his standards on the ball last night but brilliant off it. And it was the kind of game where off the ball was much more important than on it. And like Clarke, the lad is desperate for a rest. Big step up from hardly playing to being the key player each week
plenty of good things being said (deservedly so) about evans/pritchard/batth...these are players that can 'see the danger' and get in position or do the niggly stuff just disrupting play, the stuff that many do not notice when watching and we saw how important they can be to the team last week. kind of similar to when snooker became popular on television, most did not understand the reason or benefit of 'playing safe' and just wanted to see the players smashing the balls into pockets...eventually they started to appreciate and applaud a good safety shot, i think most of our fans are starting to appreciate the work rate of these lads and how it combines well with the younger lads 'flair'.
Like many of you I think Clarke needs a little rest, maybe coming on for the last 20 minutes or so. It’s like Neil who started good but was over used and his levels dropped. A rest and Neil is playing well again. The young lads would play every day if you let them but a rest from the full 90 minutes would do Clarke a world of good. This coming break will be good for all of our players and when they come back and most are fit again, more of them can be rested.
Just looking at the stats, in terms of tackles per game Neil's gone from being a non-entity last season to having the best rate at the club. Fair play to him, still got work to do in general but that's something he's made great progress with.
Yeah its so noticeable now that he is getting better at breaking up play and using his body to get between the opponent and the ball. Now he needs to improve his awareness, needs to look around more when out of possession so hes aware of the runners behind him
Have you just completely made this up? When did we have a bid accepted for him? Where have you got info about his demands from?
Think its totally made up, Wolves never wanted to sell him, hence why he signed a new contract with them and is still on the books there.
He does yeah he needs to cut out those times he dawdles on the ball and gifts chances. If he's not aware what's around him he needs to play it safe.
