An Asamoah Gyan brace was enough to secure a hard fought three points against Stoke City on Saturday afternoon. After last weekend’s catastrophe a result was all what was needed today and the lads were fortunate that was the case as it was hardly a vintage performance against an aggressive Stoke side.

Having avoided Sky Sports News for most of the week I wasn’t sure what team Bruce would play as on the one hand I thought he may stick with a similar side to try and let them try and make up for last week, but then I thought would he ring the changes and bring in the more experienced players like Richardson, Gordon, Mensah and Zenden.

As it was there were two changes, predictably Mensah came in for the suspended Bramble but surprisingly Darren Bent wasn’t included in the squad and his role of lone ranger was taken by Gyan. Stoke City or SAFC reserves had Kenwyne Jones leading the line alongside fellow old boys Dean Whitehead and Danny Collins.

We took the lead after ten minutes after good work by Henderson and Elmo on the right hand side made room for Onuoha to burst into the box. The defender got a decent shot away which was parried by Begovic into the path of Gyan who made no mistake from close range.

Gyan was in the thick of the action soon after when he was hauled down in the box for a penalty. Having watched the Ghanaian score three penalties in the World Cup and one in a shootout after missing one in injury time it seemed obvious that the hit man would take the spot kick. Wrong, up stepped Malbranque whose tame effort was saved by Begovic low to his left. Will be interesting to see whether this was a premeditated decision.

Kenwyne Jones making his first return to the SOL since leaving SAFC was widely tipped to be on form against us but to be honest it didn’t really materialise. He had one half chance when he got through but Mignolet did well to get out quick and deny him. Steed Malbranque went close just before half time when his left foot volley was tipped round the post by Begovic.

Half time saw some new fancy graphics on the scoreboard as we saw the results from other games appear on the screen in trendy transitions. Someone just discovered this feature?

After the break Stoke threw on Fuller whilst we replaced the broken Mensah with Ferdinand. With twenty minutes to go Stoke looked to have equalised when Jones got on the end of a corner and his header looped over Mignolet and into the top corner of the net before someone else appeared to parry the ball to safety with his hands. Fortunately for us both the ref and assistant saw neither incident and signalled for a corner much to the anger of Stoke’s players and management. It was a bizarre decision but we’ve got away with it.

Stoke then reverted to hacking our players with a few naughty challenges going in, Shawcross was booked for cynically hacking down Welbeck, then minutes later saw red when he brought down Gyan. Rory Delap was on by this point but we dealt relatively comfortably with his long throws.

Gyan secured all three points with a few minutes to go when he fired home from the centre of the box after good work down the left from Kieran Richardson who had replaced the subdued Elmo.

During the four minutes of injury time there was a pretty strong chorus of “Steve Bruce’s red and white army” which may comfort the manager after last week’s disgrace but there’s still a long, long way to go for that to be put right.

Final Score: Sunderland 2 Stoke City 0

ALS Man of the Match: Asamoah Gyan

Aidan Crowe

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