A soothing night for Manchester City; anything but for Sunderland. One caused trauma, the other experienced it but the fallout was not of the drama expected when Sunderland collapsed to 4-0 down 36 minutes in. Dick Advocaat remains the Sunderland manager. It would have been understandable had he been in the dugout reconsidering his summer decision to return to the Wearside club as first-half errors piled on bad luck and City enforced their superiority with some ease.
Advocaat, however, informed his subdued players at half-time that it was about individual and mutual commitment and the 67-year-old Dutchman, for now, is displaying his. Sunderland, it might be argued by Wearside’s supreme optimist, wherever he or she is, won the second half.
Ola Toivonen scored in the 83rd minute, a header from a cross by the on-loan debutant DeAndre Yedlin, but the theme of Sunderland’s season to date is first-half goals. They have now conceded 17 of them in eight matches. Every match is turning into a game of retrieval. This is not a sport at which Sunderland excel and it is back to last season for a clean sheet. Next up it is a trip to Old Trafford on Saturday.
Against a Manchester City side who have lost their previous two games – at home to Juventus and West Ham – there was an opportunity to rattle the visitors early. Believe it or not, Sunderland were almost City’s equals for the first 25 minutes. Admittedly, they were 1-0 down then – Sergio Agüero converting a ninth-minute penalty after Patrick van Aanholt’s clumsy challenge on Jesús Navas.
.
This posts are taken from the original authorized page. Authorized by the original author.
No comments:
Post a Comment