Well, that was a tonic, wasn’t it? All the talk in the build up had been that it was surely curtains for Regis Le Bris had we not managed to come up with both a performance and a win – and it was a huge task given our recent form and the ability in the Chelsea team.
The players stepped up to the plate yesterday. And, as we know, everything else feeds off that. Was it perfect? No. Was it massively important? Absolutely.
First of all, forget about the nonsense regarding VAR decisions yesterday, which
– if you pay any attention to social media – were both incorrect, and risks distracting from the key points here.
Both penalty calls were probably right. VAR, with all of its angles and cameras, decided O’Nien’s challenge on Palmer was outside the box. From the angle I saw, I’d have been frustrated if that had been us, but VAR have got more footage than we see, so they’d have given the penalty if it was inside the box. Brobbey was clearly clipped in the box before the still that’s doing the rounds of one of his legs knocking into the other.
The bigger refereeing calls yesterday – if anyone wants to go off on that particular tangent of incompetency – were how Colwill didn’t get a red for denying a goalscoring opportunity (foul, no attempt to play the ball equals a red card), and how Morgan Rogers didn’t see red for kneeing Trai Hume, who he had a run in with last season, in the head. Retrospective action on the latter looks very likely.
Regardless, this was an excellent Sunderland display. Brian Brobbey should have scored twice, Wilson Isidor should have scored once, while there were other opportunities that just went begging because our final pass wasn’t quite right.
The biggest talking point to emerge from the game, however, was the absence of Granit Xhaka for the majority of the game.
Xhaka’s form and demeanour have been under close scrutiny this season because of the Chelsea transfer business over the summer. And things have crumbled a bit under that scrutiny.
As such, he was always destined to be at least a major sub plot in this fixture, if not the main story line. But who’d have thought it would be in the manner it did turn out to be?
Injured in the warm up, he seemingly knew he wouldn’t last anything resembling the course given Jules Ahoka was warming up from the off. If it hadn’t been against Chelsea, does he even start? Of course, we second guess everything now, but a ‘he got injured in the warm up’ excuse for him not being involved in the team to face Chelsea would likely have been as believable as Morgan Rodgers’ claim he was just ambling along minding his own business when Trai Hume’s head popped out of nowhere and headbutted him in the knee.
Whatever the thinking behind it, Xhaka’s early exit worked out brilliantly for us. For whatever reason – and there are a fair few plain and simply human being possibilities, as well as innocent footballing ones – Xhaka’s not been the influence he was last season.
Jules Ahoka has virtually been man of the match in every game he’s started for us – and his early introduction had a massive impact on this game. He was rangy, he got tackles in, he was sharp, he passed well, he competed well – and he seemed to create the space for the likes of Sadiki to exploit. The dynamic of the midfield changed instantly – other players seemed to realise they needed to take responsibility – and it leaves Regis Le Bris with a big decision to make.
The big thing now is this result is used as a platform for improvement. It would be foolish to think that everything’s fine now because of one win. In some respects, we know we can compete when we’re the underdog, we know we can be defensively sound when the opposition has a lot of possession and the onus isn’t on us to break them down.
We saw the return of that dogged, determined Sunderland that’s not pleasant to play against, and that’s great. And we’re going to need that in a lot of games we have coming up over the next couple of months.
What we need to see too, though, is an ability to break down teams who are happy to sit back and catch us on the break, teams who are happy to concede possession. For all of the good yesterday, our goal was once again from the penalty spot – we simply need to find a way to score from open play with far more regularity than we have so far been able to do.
Defensively yesterday we were sound – Mukiele and O’Nien are probably our number one partnership at present, which speaks more about the summer recruitment, injuries and the form of some players too. We desperately need a fit Dan Ballard back, but that still looks a little way off and come January our defence needs to be an area of priority.
That’s all for another day, however – and Regis Le Bris will know better than anyone where work is needed.
For now, it’s a positive step towards still being a Premier League club come May.
The rhetoric has changed too – is it any coincidence that both Le Bris and Enzo Le Fee stressed the need to get to 40 points as our first priority. As far as I’m aware, that’s the first time we’ve heard that from anyone at the club this season, and it’s telling.
As Nordi Mukiele said after Bournemouth, we’d become arrogant. We hadn’t wanted to do the dirty stuff – either in matches or training. We seemed to think we’d compelted the Premier League, and it would all be easy now.
It wasn’t.
Hopefully, yesterday was a clear signal that humility and humbleness – that desire to do all of the hard work and grind results out – is back to stay.
Because, god knows it’s been missed.
Welcome back, Sunderland. We’ve missed you.
