Saturday 3rd November 2025
Sunderland v Everton – Premier League
Stadium of Light Kick-Off: 20:00
Tickets & Match Coverage
Tickets: Tickets are sold out.
TV/Stream: Full live match coverage is available via Sky Sports.
Radio: Full live match commentary available via BBC Radio Newcastle (not online)
Don’t forget to follow the blow-by-blow account of the game on the Roker Report Twitter feed (@RokerReport) and check out the player ratings after the full-time whistle at
www.RokerReport.sbnation.com!
The build-up…
Our first Monday night fixture in front of the Sky cameras under the floodlights, and it’s a got a feeling of a proper football
game ahead tonight – with plots and sub-plots galore!
For starters, Sunderland could make it three wins on the bounce tonight, which will be – by my reckoning, answers on a postcard if I’m wrong – the first time since March/April 2008 when Roy Keane’s Sunderland won at Villa Park 1-0, beat West Ham at home 2-1 and followed it up by claiming three points at Fulham in a 3-1 win. We lost four of the next five however.
There’s also the extra spice generated by the return of the Scottish manager – where we can all imagine the reception he will get when he emerges from the tunnel. Will he be bothered? – I doubt it, but it should mean the fires are stoked in the stands, which he’ll probably have to focus his players on extinguishing as early as possible.
But the return of the Scottish manager dangers to overshadow the return of Jordan Pickford, who will no doubt get a great reception, and now finds himself playing for the manager who was in charge during that dismal relegation that led to Pickford requiring a move to remain in the top flight. Football has a way of conspiring to create scenarios like that one tonight.
But, looking at the game ahead, Le Bris appeared to completely throw Enzo Maresca off-guard by deploying five-at-the-back in possession, while making it as fluid and explosive as possible when we did have the football. Tonight is a different prospect, but not completely unlike our recent win over Wolverhampton Wanderers in terms of requiring to be more on the front foot to take maximum points.
We look to have perfected that blueprint away from home, where we look structured and organised, but tonight is a good opportunity to improve on that strategy at home and lift it a level from that performance against Wolves, and hopefully take maximum points for a third successive game.
Everton are having a pretty significant 2025. It began almost immediately back in January when Sean Dyche left Goodison Park as manager, and one name became obvious for the situation and the club – David Moyes.
You see it often in football where players and managers just seem to suit certain clubs. There’s no science behind it and you can never predict it, but with certain figures a club just fits like a glove and they do their thing to the best of their ability. Moyes and Everton seem to have that relationship.
He was the first to admit that this second spell wouldn’t be as long as the eleven years he stayed originally, but he signed a two-and-a-half-year contract with the aim of stabilising Everton from what has been a rocky few years.
Since Moyes left all those years ago, they have bounced through the likes of Roberto Martinez, Ronald Koeman, Sam Allardyce, Marco Silva, Carlo Ancelotti, Rafa Benitez and Frank Lampard, while spending silly amounts of money on players who didn’t really deserve having silly amounts of money spent on them.
Throughout all of that they have had to focus on leaving Goodison Park to move to their brand spanking new Hill Dickinson Stadium, which meant they came a little close to relegation than they might have preferred – where the lack of quality coming up from the Championship maybe helped out.
So far they have lost four in nine, but three of those were against Liverpool, Manchester City and Spurs – where the other was the most disappointing, coming on the opening weekend at Leeds United. They are however, on a run of one win in the last six, and only the bottom three have scored fewer goals. A win tonight would be the shot in the arm they need, losing to us tonight would crank up the pressure that little bit more on the Scottish manager.
The betting…
The bookies have the Lads at 7/4 to win the game, while Everton are priced at 13/8, and the draw is 2/1.
Head to head… at Sunderland…
(All competitions)
- Sunderland wins: 49
- Draws: 18
- Everton wins: 22
- Sunderland goals: 167
- Everton goals: 99
Last time we met… at the Stadium of Light
Monday 12th September 2016
Premier League
Sunderland 0-3 Everton
[Lukaku 60’, 68’, 71’]
Sunderland: Pickford, Manquillo, Kirchoff (Denayer), Kone, Djilobodji, Van Aanholt, Rodwell, Gooch (Khazri), Watmore (Ndong), Januzaj, Defoe Substitutes not used: Mika, Love, O’Shea, McNair
Everton: Stekelenburg, Coleman, Baines, Barry, Williams, Jagielka, Bolasie (Davies), Barkley (Deulofeu), Lukaku (Kone), Gueye, Miralles Substitutes not used: Robles, Holgate, Mori, Lennon
Attendance: 42,206
Played for both…
Paul Bracewell
There can’t be many players who have the type of relationship with two clubs that Paul Bracewell has and if you haven’t caught up with Friday’s edition of Haway The Podcast where we caught up with the midfielder, it might be worth a listen.
After following Alan Durban from Stoke City to Sunderland, it would only be a year before one of the big clubs came calling, and it would be his former Stoke teammate Howard Kendall who took Bracewell to FA Cup holders Everton.
In his first season he made 57 appearances in 1984-85 when Everton came within one defeat of completing a treble when they missed out on the FA Cup courtesy of a Norman Whiteside goal after claiming the league and European Cup Winners Cup.
An injury sustained at St James’ Park in a challenge with Billy Whitehurst robbed Bracewell of two years of his career that would have surely led to World Cup appearances and more silverware at Everton. On returning to action he would admit that he had lost 50% of movement in one ankle, but that didn’t put off Denis Smith bringing him back to Roker, where he led us to the top flight in his first season.
After a spell up the road he returned to take us to the Premier League as Peter Reid’s player/assistant manager and would return again in many roles that included assistant manager to multiple managers leading up to David Moyes, which saw Bracewell leave the club for a fourth time. He recently left the academy at Spurs.
Prediction…
Sunderland 2-0 Everton
I’m slightly concerned because I’ve been pessimistic on my previous two predictions – hopefully my optimism is rightly placed this time around.
