Sunderland extended an unbeaten run to ten matches but by once again failing to win, a winless streak of five matches has now emerged concurrently. Tonight, we struggled to break down our opponents, who blocked 11 of our 17 shots throughout the match.
ANTHONY PATTERSON: 7/10
Nothing to comment on really, kept a clean sheet but had barely anything to do.
LUKE O’NIEN: 6.5/10
O’Nien made a couple of errors, including nearly letting them in at one point in the first half after moving out of position. Overall, a pretty innocuous performance from him though.
CHRIS MEPHAM: 8/10
Headed everything away, had a few nice dribbles and completed the most passes (88) of any man on the pitch tonight. Solid as always.
DAN BALLARD: 8/10
Also mostly without fault, calm under pressure and battling, winning the most duels of any of the players tonight (10). Not trying to rely too much on stats but it illustrates that both of our centre backs did very well in this game, like they did against Millwall.
TRAI HUME: 7.5/10
Picked up a bit of the defensive workload from Tommy Watson and did quite well playing on his weaker foot. There was one dodgy moment where he missed a sliding tackle late on, nothing major really came from it however.
CHRIS RIGG: 8/10
He was really good at turning out of trouble and then as a result putting in some nice passes that really should have led to more bother for their defence, other players didn’t follow through unfortunately. Skied a shot in the second half.
DAN NEIL: 6/10
I can’t remember anything notable from him, with him being a defensive midfielder against a side that were basically parking the bus I guess that’s expected.
PATRICK ROBERTS: 7/10
Very nearly scored, sending a strike barely round the post with about 15 minutes remaining. Perhaps he ignored a few good chances to get the ball to Bellingham.
JOBE BELLINGHAM: 8/10
Created a few chances and I don’t think his positioning was awarded as much as it should have been. There was one awry pass in the first half but I think he played his midfield role well.
TOMMY WATSON: 6/10
Positively, got fouled a lot and won a few corners. On the negative side, struggled to steal the ball off anyone and struggled to recover after being dispossessed. He was better in the second half with both of those things though. With him just coming through the academy, he obviously won’t be a refined Championship footballer just yet.
WILSON ISIDOR: 6/10
Isidor had a bright opening 10 minutes or so. There was a dearth of service at times but when there wasn’t he wasn’t putting himself into good enough places to really cause much threat. Nearly caught their goalkeeper off guard once or twice.
SUBS:
ELIEZER MAYENDA: 7/10
Looked better than Watson at getting into the box, didn’t cause much bother when he got there though but no one did tonight. He’s definitely capable of playing as a winger, evidenced by the last two matches.
AJI ALESE: 7/10
Linked up well with Mayenda but didn’t have an awful lot to do defensively.
