The red and white rot is stopped…finally
Amid a swirling wind, crisp packet tornadoes and sweet wrapper hurricanes, Sunderland eked out a scrappy, scratchy and fairly forgettable draw with a Leeds side that might well have fancied their chances of staging a smash and grab after a solid start to the season under Daniel Farke.
As it was, the Yorkshire side seemed to struggle with the weather conditions and the thud and blunder nature of the contest just as much as we did, so all in all, perhaps this wasn’t an unfair result for either side.
Neither team really got it together for long enough to claim any real superiority and despite a handful of decent chances throughout — most notably for Brian Brobbey and Sean Longstaff — you could hardly argue that either could feel hard done by.
For Sunderland, just another fairly average outcome.
Boy oh boy, do we have work to do, and Coventry next weekend is looming larger. A win on Sunday would’ve meant that victory next time out at the CBS would’ve given us a genuine boost and our season a new lease of life, but as it is, we need to somehow snaffle three points in order to keep pace with those around us in the lower reaches of the league.
Concerning? I think so. And another big week awaits. Mass rotation for the league cup, please, and let’s try and give the Sky Blues something to think about next weekend.
A grittier display tempered by familiar shortcomings
Praising the effort levels of a Régis Le Bris-coached Sunderland side should not be something we go above and beyond to do. After all, ever since he arrived on Wearside, the head coach has made that a central tenet of the teams he’s built.
With that in mind and after some worryingly lethargic displays on the domestic front in recent times, the Lads looked to have a little more bite about them on Sunday — but again, is that something we should really be praising?
Effort, work rate and aggression were the qualities that propelled Sunderland so far last season, yet they hadn’t been present often enough this season and we need to make them an integral part of our approach once again.
The presence of Luke O’Nien seemed to have a bit of an impact and Noah Sadiki, Chris Rigg and Timur Tuteriov were industrious, but once again, we found genuine and sustained attacking threats hard to come by despite a lively display from Nilson Angulo, and it never really felt as though we were liable to catch fire in that sense.
The good and the not-so good displayed in widescreen once again.
Chris Rigg makes his mark as our new centurion
Reaching the one hundred-game mark for any club is a noteworthy achievement. Doing so in the pressure cooker environment of Sunderland, as a local lad and before you’ve turned twenty is truly exceptional and Rigg marked the occasion with a good, solid performance that some would argue he needed in front of a home crowd.
OK, he’s not a winger by trade and perhaps he never will be, but like Trai Hume, you know you’re going to get maximum commitment and endeavour wherever he plays, and he was arguably one of our brighter attacking sparks on Sunday.
My main concern with Rigg is that he mightn’t get a sustained run in the middle due to the presence of Enzo Le Fée and others, but he rarely disappoints when he’s called upon and it’s fair to say that he’s come a hell of a long way since that notable FA Cup tie against Fulham in 2023 — Ross Stewart’s final game for Sunderland — where he was cruelly denied a fairytale winner.
He’s not looked back since and he’s still got so much more potential to fulfil.
The current table doesn’t lie — are we in the relegation battle?
If you hack through the excuses, the statistical comfort blankets and the supposed mitigating circumstances to crystallize Sunderland’s current position, it doesn’t look great — bottom of the table, one league win, and a whole host of puzzles for Le Bris to try and unravel.
OK, it’s still reasonably early in the season and there’s time to get ourselves into a more encouraging position before maybe launching a late bid for mid-table security, but the question that’s nagging away at me is: “Can and will we do that?”
Europa League football is wonderful and will make memories to last a lifetime (coincidentally, I don’t think that’s got anything to do with our domestic troubles at all), but the stark reality is that we’re finding positive league results worryingly hard to come by and it’s undoubtedly causing tension right across the red and white landscape.
We need to find the answers. We need players to find their best form. And we need Le Bris to coax performances and results from this group that’ll give us a fighting chance of enjoying a strong-ish season.
Our fixture list post-Dinamo Zagreb is brutal. Time is of the essence and any concerns we have should not be dismissed.
