The Stadium of Light: from fortress to guest house?
In the aftermath of Sunderland’s gutsy and memorable 0-0 draw with Manchester City, a Citizens-affiliated social media account was tremendously complimentary about the Lads, highlighting how difficult we were to play against and noting how tough we’d made life for Pep Guardiola’s visitors.
How Sunderland could do with some of that fighting spirit now.
As we eventually slumped to a 0-1 home loss to the Seagulls, it marked a third successive defeat in front of our own crowd at the end of a game during
which we competed fairly well until two key moments: the denial of a Chris Rigg goal due to an offside call and Yankuba Minteh’s sloppy opener.
From then on in, heads dropped, the atmosphere became understandably edgy and the eventual outcome felt inevitable as our once-proud home record was dented again.
Sunderland didn’t exactly play terribly on Saturday.
There was far more intensity and purpose on display then the players showed against Port Vale and the likes of Rigg, Omar Alderete and Chemsdine Talbi all carved out openings of one form or another, but the sucker-punch from Brighton rocked us and try as we might, the recovery never came to pass and a golden opportunity to build some vital pre-derby momentum and confidence eventually slipped away amid a sense of immense frustration.
A real disappointment.
Chris Rigg takes his chance with aplomb
After a laboured and wholly unconvincing performance during last weekend’s FA Cup defeat, Rigg found himself pitched into the starting eleven against Brighton as injuries continue to befall our wingers and Régis Le Bris embarks on what feels like an ever more desperate search for solutions.
This was a big opportunity for Rigg and he had to handle a lot of responsibility on the day, but he was Sunderland’s best player by a distance and only the intervention of VAR for an offside call against Alderete robbed him of what would’ve been a memorable goal, with his smart finish beating Bart Verbruggen and sending the Stadium of Light into all-too-brief raptures.
Perhaps the plan was always to provide Rigg with an increased amount of game time as the season heads towards its final stages, but even though he perhaps found himself in the team as a matter of necessity instead of choice, he didn’t look overawed or out of his depth in the slightest — and these are the kinds of learning experiences that’ll be vital as he continues to evolve as a Premier League prospect.
An unfortunate midfield misfire
I don’t think I’ll plunge the Sunderland fan community into a state of nuclear war by stating that Granit Xhaka currently looks as though he’s running on fumes and isn’t influencing games in the all-conquering fashion as he did earlier in the season.
Therefore, with the Swiss talisman not currently at his best, Sunderland needed others to step up and stamp their mark on proceedings — and this is where it got somewhat messy.
Habib Diarra’s current form hasn’t come as a big surprise to me after an injury-interrupted campaign that was made even more complicated by his AFCON call up and subsequent return to the red and white fold, but although he was admittedly poor on Saturday, struggling to retain possession and unable to drive Sunderland forward with any real potency, I think it’s far too early to write him off or dismiss him as a £30 million flop.
He’s clearly got ability to burn.
This was illustrated during a brilliant performance for Senegal against England at the City Ground not so long ago, and the club has clearly invested him for the longer term, so although this wasn’t his finest hour in a Sunderland shirt, I don’t think it hints at anything more worrying and perhaps with a good run of games, he’ll start to rediscover the kind of form he was showing before being struck by injury.
The road to the derby starts here…buckle up!
With a frankly ridiculous injury list, patchy form, goals currently hard to come by and a tactical approach that’s not yielding results on a consistent basis, a trip to Tyneside to face Newcastle probably isn’t the kind of prospect that many Sunderland fans are relishing at this stage, but it’s coming up quickly and we need to be as ready as we can — despite question marks currently hanging over the game-readiness of some of our most influential players.
Whether we deploy the kind of defensive setup that’ll leave us deeper than the Kursk or try something a little bit different in an attempt to complete what would be a staggering league double over Eddie Howe’s side, St James’ Park will doubtless take no prisoners of a red and white persuasion next Sunday.
Le Bris will need to summon all of his tactical guile in order to steer Sunderland to any form of respectable result — and the players will need to rise to the occasion, too.
It’ll be a typically nervy build up but these are fixtures in which you either stand tall or you wilt. We did the former when Newcastle arrived on Wearside earlier in the season, and let’s hope we can do the same again this time around.
A big week awaits.
