It's November and I think we are the only club in English football to still have not scored a league goal with a striker.
first off, madely, hate seeing 'the pub landlord' as referee but was actually starting to think he was doing ok along with his officials and i still think that was a bit of a harsh sending off and ruined what would have been a good game but he again sets his strange standards then allows plenty worse tackles to go. i am usually one of the last to complain about a player but i have mentioned onien a couple of times lately, the lad is superb in his attitude and commitment, throws himself into every game and gives over 100% every time but i really do not want to see him as a central defender for much longer, we have lads now topping 6 foot that i am sure would defend without the need to grapple, he did well at LB and RB and could cover midfield. we have to be the 'unluckiest' team in all the leagues when it comes to the ball running free, we rarely end with the ball at our feet and the opposition get it cleared easy or the ball gets blocked by a man who has no idea the ball hit him, not like we have not created enough chances and as i said earlier in this thread, we either cant hit the target or cant stop hitting it and today is a prime example of that. clarke and roberts, great watching them but they really need to practice their final passes, so many good moves end with a pass to the opposition, there are a few things that need to be refined, those two are not alone and they would be among the first names on the team sheet for me. anyway, now that is out the system, this team is still great to watch and a draw would have been a result i would have taken if offered afore kick off, well played swansea for keeping it tight...we are still 'learning' with this squad and there is not a single one i would want to see dropped or sold but they really need to work on breaking teams down.
Strikers cost us here, we have four on the books and none of them have a goal. Need a rethink in jan if one cant find his scoring boots.
FFS that’s gotta be the worst result of the reason. That’s how you play when down to 10 men. Were you watching Tony. Headless chickens today / where was the leadership. Feckin Joke. Bart
Far too pedestrian and no urgency against 10 men. May be our stars aren’t as starry as we think and I don’t understand Adil not getting on.
We’ve hit our ceiling with Mowbray. He’s done a great job, really improved us and brought our players on. He has teams around the playoff places, that’s what he does and he’s been great. If we want to kick on now and go to the next level, we need to bring the next man in to do that for us.
Tells its own story really. We rely on Clarke to score and he's not even a striker. We must be so easy to defend against in the box because our strikers couldnt hit a barn door. We have 4 strikers and none of them have played in England before this season Burstow an exception but he's never played first team football. Not signing a recognised and experienced striker was a huge error from our hierarchy because we have every area covered on the pitch. No teams get promoted without a goalscorer, just look at the teams promoted over the last 5 years or so. They all had a 20 plus goal a season goalscorer.
Mowbray deserves the rest of the season, heh as us playing well, we lack a striker who scores, thats it
You'd be gutted, as a Sunderland supporter, leaving that ground. A weird combination of shooting when it wasn't on and not shooting when it was. I groaned at the sending off, I knew it would disrupt us and we were playing superbly until then. Balls to it, I've over next week so will start looking forward to that instead of thinking about this.
We have no plan. We are pretty to watch but we don’t ever really control a game and put real pressure on. We are easy to play against and hence we only winning games when people have a go at us and leave space. I don’t know what the solution is but we need a bit of fresh imagination. This is a really poor result with an extra man for an hour.
Ridiculously frustrating. We miss so many good chances, they've had that bit luck too with things coming off the woodwork but we have to be more clinical. In truth we should have been out of sight by HT. The changes did the opposite of what they were intended and we just seemed to resort to pumping high balls in for Darling and Cabango to head away. A promotion side win that by 3 or 4 today, the longer it went on it felt inevitable we wouldn't score.
I think the problem is some teams know we struggle to play with a striker so they’re happy to sit back and let us pass around in their own half with the game infront of them. When we had Stewart we didn’t play this ultra-possession based style of football. It’s up to the manager and players to learn to play against teams who are going to sit deep because I think we’ll see it more often. We’ll play well against teams who want to come and attack us but struggle to break down teams who are ****e. We’re crying out for a poacher, someone who can just let the game pass them by but just needs one sight of goal and pulls the trigger - an Aguero type.
Mowbray continuing to annoy me with his decisions. Pritchard came on and I thought great he will sit deeper and dictate like he did at QPR, but he came on and he was playing higher than Hemir? Rusyn looked sharp, some good touches and great hold up play so Mowbray takes him off for Hemir who clearly needs time in the u21s, not sure he touched the ball more than 5 times. We had no plan in the second half, our best chances were shots from outside the box. Not good enough.
