Unfortunately for Lee Johnson, these results were becoming the norm and would continue to be going forward. Johnson had his Sunderland team playing a wonderful brand of football where they would press
high and attack relentlessly but every so often, the systems failure button would be hit and the team would have a complete no show.
This 5-1 defeat away to Rotherham would be the second of four during Johnson’s tenure in the 2021-22 season before owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus relieved him of his duties. Prior to the Rotherham defeat, the team lost 4-0 away to Portsmouth while additional defeats to Sheffield Wednesday (3-0) and the final nail in the coffin – Bolton Wanderers (6-0) – would see him lose his job.
Without these losses, Sunderland’s form guide was looking pretty positive but it was the underlying threat of implosion that was fearing fans and ownership alike.
After this extremely chastening defeat against promotion rivals Rotherham, Johnson apologised to the fans and insisted that things would change and be different going forward. Famous last words.
In his post match press conference, the Sunderland head coach appeared unsure of pin pointing the exact reason for these semi regular hammerings but suggested that the left hand side of his team appear to be having one too many off days for his liking.
On this day, Denis Cirkin was playing left back along with Aiden McGeady ahead of him who would be sent off early into the second half for two yellows. Johnson also suggested that maybe the shape and make of his team would have to be altered for the more physical encounters like the games against Rotherham.
“Their gamestyle completely nullified us completely and we couldn’t get out. A lot of their play was down our left side and it’s a glaring weakness, if we don’t get have a good day that side is quite easy to disrupt us on.
“Sometimes you’ve to revert to winning your individual battles, physically or technically.
“We got back level against the run of play which I was so pleased about, and then we had a spell of about fifteen minutes where it was about equal, but they still looked the most threatening.
“But it was men against boys, it really was. The amount of lazy fouls we gave away, we were leggy, everywhere the ball had just been.
“I know the fans will be hurting badly.
“In the big picture of the season, we have to learn the lessons. But we know we’ve already had a couple of those and the pattern has continued.
“That’s so frustrating, it was too laissez-faire from the first action.
“That’s been said in there, and it’s been taken on to be fair.
“This has to be a line in the sand, adapt, and when we play teams like this we cope better. We might lose some fluidity in that and of course, that’s my decision to have to make.
“That’s what I’ve got to decide, what am I willing to give up to battle better in games like this?”
As we all know about Lee Johnson now, the man was a likeable character who could talk a good game but ultimately, trends and patterns began to develop that were not in his favour. Only three days after this defeat, the team were well and truly humbled 3-0 by Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough and for all the of the talk that Johnson said, not much really changed.
The team would go on another great run over Christmas and into the new year but the next battering was never far away as further defeats to a Chris Maguire inspired Lincoln and then Bolton ultimately saw Sunderland replace Johnson with Alex Neil in search of a more pragmatic approach.
