Sunderland put three points on the board in our 5000th league fixture, moving us 15 points clear of seventh place. An early Eliezer Mayenda goal gave us the advantage before Chris Mepham won it for us in the second half, cancelling out a Cardiff goal close to the break that was caused by an Anthony Patterson error.
ANTHONY PATTERSON: 5/10
Made an error that led to an equaliser, far from his first in the last couple of months and wasn’t really challenged in any major way throughout most of the rest of the game. Made one decent save.
TRAI HUME: 8/10
Put in a few nice tackles, won a lot of fouls (especially in the first half) and usually came away with the ball when he went for it. Also helped out going forward and some of his balls into the box weren’t capitalised on as much as they should have been but one of his balls
CHRIS MEPHAM: 8/10
Scored the winner (his first goal in a Sunderland shirt) and was almost completely solid. He was good in the air and looked calm on the ball.
LUKE O’NIEN: 7/10
He performed his defensive duties nicely and wasn’t afraid to put a foot in. One thing to criticise is that he wasn’t distributing the ball to Cirkin as quickly as he should have been.
LEO HJELDE: 6.5/10
Hjelde missed an opportunity to get a shot away in a very dangerous position in the first half and wasn’t as refined as our other defenders. He wasn’t poor though and there weren’t any glaringly obvious errors.
ALAN BROWNE: 6.5/10
Browne only played just under an hour, which has affected his rating. On a slightly different day I think one of his shots would have found the right side of the post and his midfield work was quite tidy.
DAN NEIL: 6.5/10
He lost the ball a couple of times and struggled to get the better of his opponents on a few occasions. There were a number of moments where he showed his quality though.
JOBE BELLINGHAM: 7.5/10
Perhaps struggled a touch with the physicality of Cardiff but more than made up for it with his attacking work. Unlucky in the sense that he kept having a shot on goal but their players were able to block them every time.
PATRICK ROBERTS: 7/10
He was bright and had some end product by assisting Mayenda’s opener, unfortunately I can’t go higher than a seven because he only played half of the opening 45.
ELIEZER MAYENDA: 8.5/10
Made a number of blistering dribbles, unfortunately none of them came off but he kept doing this until the very end of the match so his workrate is worth praising. Scored our first goal as well, his third in just two matches.
ROMAINE MUNDLE: 7.5/10
Mundle was more than happy to have a shot and was effective at getting into some dangerous positions with some nice runs. Thought he linked up well with Mayenda.
SUBS:
CHRIS RIGG: 6/10
Came on to replace the injured Roberts and just didn’t pose as much a threat. He had a couple of decent moments but struggled to get the better of his opponents.
DENNIS CIRKIN: 6/10
He got dispossessed at one point and this nearly caused us some bother, as mentioned he might have fared better if he got the ball a bit earlier.
WILSON ISIDOR: 8/10
Was a fantastic impact substitute, coming on and creating lots of chances and he also assisted the winner.
TOMMY WATSON: 6/10
Got himself into some nice positions to get crosses away, none of these came to much though, I’ll chalk that up to lack of match sharpness. Squandered a decent chance in stoppage time.
