He played well defensively mate, but them wayward passes put us on the back foot too often for my liking and on another day it could have cost us. Maybe he's trying too hard when in reality, he just needs to settle down and play his game. If he does that, he's a diamond.
Fair play to them. It was a day when they scrapped for it and they got a reward. They looked to me a team that has lost heavily recently and it has ruined confidence. They grafted though and did the ugly things. This is a result to work from as a coach. I thought the subs were well used as well. Bringing on attacking players to try and play front foot football last 25 was good to see and brave from the manager. I wouldnt have blamed him for taking nil nil today. I had a couple of pints before kick off so my jdugement may not be great, but a bit of credit to Bailey Wright today who I have been a big critic of. Thought he led the back line well.
A win is a win is a win. Not the best performance but two goals and a clean sheet. Ipswich had lots of the ball but were largely all fart and very little smell. Hopefully its a confidence builder for the next games.
Had a feeling the subs would decide the game today and to be fair to LJ he used them well, mind you bringing Geads on 60 at mins is a no brainer, even for him.
Well that was a decent post to put out there, pity they don't all work out but I did feel with that record we had every chance of winning this one, happy days.
reading between boards i find it hard to believe so many people saw so many different games today and it really shows which posters have some kind of 'agenda' or 'dislike' for a particular player...refusing to even agree that one might have had a good game, they also seem to notice any bad pass yet miss the good ones a player makes. we were not good by any stretch of the imagination, our first attempt on target got our goal and we have had the same done to us, we won so i cannot complain but we really do need further work on the defence as we are still not defending crosses or balls into the box as we should and for some reason (maybe recent drop in confidence?) our passing has gone all to hell, i have noticed a couple of the players in particular getting called out for it today but really it was across the board. i will take a couple of scrappy games if it means the team get that early season confidence and swagger back and i guess every other supporter will take it as well, plenty of time to start dominating and cruising to wins, i hope.
Hopefully it’s a shot of confidence to get us going again. It was grim to watch and some of the ‘tactical changes’ were bizarre, but we got it done so let’s get on that.
Pretty much this. It wasn't the best but we won. I'll take that every Sat between now and May if I could
Iirc that's the first time we've won a game straight after the international break. Happy to be proved wrong just can't recall us winning before.
442 didn't work - too many people out of position, but when he changed it after 20 mins to the usual 4-2-3-1 we looked far sharper/
Not a great game but sending me off back to North Carolina with a win. It’s the first I’ve seen a win in a few years. Good to break the losing streak.
I'm hoping to one day soon retire from saying this because I bore myself never mind everyone else, but statistically he's one of our top performers this season, second best after Stewart. Have a look at this detailed breakdown if you want, it's quite interesting: https://www.whoscored.com/Teams/16/Show/England-Sunderland Now this doesn't automatically make him a great player but as I'm concerned it's a fact that he doesn't deserve to be singled out as one of our worst players. Also, what stats don't pick up is that he's exactly the sort of character you want in the team, he's about as positive and upbeat as you could hope for. And he's more than a bit good at mind games with the opposition which is another bonus. Underrated player.
At one point the blokes (and me) that I sit next to, tried counting how many good passes Evans made during the 2nd half. He cocked up 4 in a row... so we gave up counting. In the 1st 20 mins we tried to count Gooch's positive and negative actions. We got up to negative 7 and positive 1 and gave up that as well. However despite all the poor play we won.. funny old game, as a very famous footballer once said.
