On Monday night, I started the report by saying what a crap week it had been to be a Sunderland supporter the previous week, and how last week was the opposite, as everything in the garden had been rosy following the four against Stoke and the good performance that brought it. This week has been back to the bad. Against Norwich, we had loads of possession, but we outdone by a team who were keen, mobile, and versatile. Whereas with Stoke, with whom you know fine well what you’re going to get, making it up to you to combat and overcome it, the Canaries used the width of the pitch well and switched from one flank to the other through a scampering, interactive centre.
A bad day at the office, followed by Brambles antics at a singles club in Yarm. Yarm, fer Christ’s sake – why Yarm? The club were quick to point out that he was on his own (it was a singles club, what do you expect?), and equally as quick to suspend him, the right thing to do, even if certain aspects of the whole thing sound like a bit of a stitch-up. His antics relegated Bardo’s misdemeanour to the inside pages. I must admit I panicked a bit when I saw the headline “Bardsley banned for six months” but it was his driving dopiness rather than a retrospective FA decision that brought it about.
I’m not the first to raise the point about footballers being arseholes this week – with Tevez, being paid £200k a week, refusing to go on as a sub in Europe, at the top of the idiot pile as far as football goes. He’s since claimed that he didn’t refuse, but I think I’d take Mancini’s word above his any day of the week. They are right to suspend him, but what next? Who will take him on, with his wages and his character? City should be able to invoke the clause that used to be part of footballers’ contracts which allowed the club to give players a week’s notice at the first sign of twattery, or two week’s if they simply didn’t fancy him anymore.
On a lighter note, does anyone watch the Pointless quiz on BBC1? I missed the episode in question, but my better half found it on tinterweb. For those unfamiliar with the show’s premise, contestants have to pick correct answers which the fewest number of audience members knew. This one was to put the manager with the football club. There were a pair of mags (thankfully, they didn’t win) who objected to Bruce’s name being read out before Pardew’s, and then again when twelve of the audience put Bruce with as compared with the five who put Pardew with the mags. Thankfully, Pointless Richard (the show’s expert on the obscure) pointed out to them that those statistics meant that Sunderland are more than twice as good as the mags. Good man, he’ll be in receipt of a Christmas card from DL14 in a couple of months.
And so to the football
Ming
O’Shea Brown Turner Rico
Elmo Gardner Catts Larsson
Sess
Bendtner
To be honest, we were surprised to see Sess and Elmo after Monday’s nonsense, but injuries to Wickham and Vaughan dictated their appearance. By ten past three, 2-0 was the last score line I was imagining. West Brom started like a whirlwind, and all we could muster was a first-minute run and chipped cross from Elmo as we kicked North. A curled free-kick easily headed in by Morrison and a Shane Long gallop through the middle - and let’s face it, he’s no sprinter- saw us two down within five minutes and playing some of the worst football I’ve seen in forty odd years. The boos were out, Turner looked slower than something that doesn’t move, and I could see another three or four going in. Catts couldn’t organise any shape, and things looked very bleak. Then Gardner shot a foot wide from the spot, Brown started to win challenges, and Turner started getting in the way of things. Bendtner played it wide to Sess on the left, and his cross-shot was swept home by Larsson, but from an offside position, and got himself booked for hoying the ball away. By twenty five past, we’d actually got to grips with the game, and when Bendtner opened his account with a shot from the spot that took a deflection to go over the keeper, we actually looked like a football team.
We copied the visitors by scoring within a minute or two, when Bendtner took a headed pass from Larsson and crossed from the left to find Elmo steaming in and banging a good header past the keeper. Game on, at last. Sess, recovered from whatever malaise had been holding him back on Monday, ran at the Baggies defence at every opportunity, and was barged in the back almost every time he collected the ball. He showed to great skill down the left to make space for the cross, but over-hit it. Larsson won a corner on the right, but Turner couldn’t quite get there. Catts, who’d been flinging himself into things in his usual OTT fashion got himself booked for his first decent tackle of the afternoon, and that was basically him out of the game. They headed wide from a free-kick, Bendtner side footed at the keeper from the edge of the box after a good break, and Gardner produced a great turn and shot to force a good save. Hhhm, we might actually win this, we thought as half-time arrived at 2-2.
No changes for the second half, and from a Larsson free on the left, Brown’s downward header bounced off the turf and over the bar at the back post. Damn. Rico was flattened off the ball trying to break down the left, but the ref decided that no card was necessary, then Sess took another whack in the back to win us a free-kick, and Elmo came in from the right to find Sess, who for once didn’t manage to control the ball and it was hacked away. The little Beininian then thundered through the middle, twazzled past most of the defence, and rolled the ball to Elmo, who saw his shot cannon off the keeper’s legs for a corner. Catts, who seemed to be the only person in the ground who didn’t realise he was in real danger of being sent off, continued to clatter about, so on came Colback to calm things down and keep us with eleven players on the field. Sess nearly wriggled through the middle again, and we threatened to grab what would at one time have been an unlikely winner. Turner had grown into the game without getting any faster, even producing a backheel to help get the ball away, and Brown began to dominate Odimwinge.
They brought on Scharner, who normally has a cracker against us, then swapped Thomas for Dorrans. Ji came on with ten to go for a limping Elmo, and the Korean was his usual non-stop self, causing all sorts of worry for their defence without actually getting into a dangerous position. There were a few ping-pong moments in their box when the ball just wouldn’t drop for Bendtner or Sess, then, with two minutes added, Gardner made way for Meyler. We saw out the game and came out of it with a point – probably a great game for a neutral, and, to be honest, apart from the first twenty minutes, we had plenty of the ball but should have been more effective with it. Once we’d settled at the back, and worked out that Catts has problems passing the ball more than ten yards and drags Gardner down to his level at times, we got some shape and gave them bother. Probably not that much of a compliment, as – no disrespect - it was West Brom and not Chelsea we were playing. What on earth they thought they were up to in those first few minutes is anybody’s guess, but to come back from such an awful start and after conceding twice in quick succession was praiseworthy. Having said that, we could and should have gone on to win it. We had sufficient possession, sufficient attacks, to have got at least that third crucial goal.
Man of the Match? I’ll give it to Sess, just ahead of Bendtner, for getting back to where we know he can be. And a word of praise for Elmo, as effective today as he was ineffective at Norwich.
Keep the Faith
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