REAL BETIS REVIEW

Sunderland fell to a 1-0 defeat against Real Betis in our first game of August, the game itself didn’t see too much action towards either goal but, more importantly, we did get to see Reinildo, Granit Xhaka and Robin Roefs play for us for the first time.

This is how we lined up:

Roefs, Hume, Ballard, Reinildo, Jones, Diarra, Sadiki, Xhaka, Talbi, Mayenda, Adingra

We had a decent chance a few minutes in. Talbi and Diarra linked up well and found Hume, the latter’s cross went behind Mayenda unfortunately and it came to nothing in the end. The visitors had their own go at breaking the deadlock soon after, with an initial header bouncing off of the crossbar before it was cleared off the line by Hume. After this, aside from a couple strikes that didn’t really trouble the Betis goalkeeper, nothing really happened at either end.

In the first half, Granit Xhaka looked impressive. Granted, there wasn’t an awful lot for him to do but he never misplaced a pass and turned on the ball nicely. Adingra had a few decent moments breaking away on the wing and Sadiki looked solid in the middle of the park. I did find it a bit odd that Reinildo was used as a centre back rather than in his natural position as a left back (he has played centre back before occasionally), especially when we still have an attacking midfielder playing as a left back. I’m not sure where Seelt or Johnson were today, I don’t think either is injured. Could this indicate they are about to be loaned out? Hopefully there’s a sign here that a new centre back signing is coming up soon. Roefs commanded his box well and his distribution wasn’t too shabby, basically what we were told about him when we signed him. Patterson still wasn’t even on the bench. It was also interesting that we played both Xhaka and Sadiki, when Sadiki and Xhaka are our two most defensive options out of our new midfielders. Now is the time to experiment though when there’s nothing on the line and when we have lots of midfielders to think about fitness wise.

Xhaka sent a great ball towards Adingra after the break and the Ivorian put the ball into the net, alas it was ruled out for offside. Offsides became a common theme for us in the second 45, it got a bit tedious really. Following this, there was a lot of nothing but Real Betis won a corner with 15 minutes left on the clock (it looked like they won it from an offside position to me) and they capitalised. A draw would have been a fair result in my opinion based on how the game had gone. We should have scored before the final whistle as Jones flashed one across the box but no one met it to tap home.

Harrison Jones has done decently enough playing out of position throughout preseason, I thought Ballard held his own. Mayenda didn’t put himself about enough to warrant a goal but I think he still needs more support up top from the other players on the pitch, the Jones ball into the box late on was a great example of that. I’d like to see us shooting more too, we keep getting into good positions then playing one too many passes and wasting the chance. I’m not too concerned with the results at this point, I would like to see us win one of the games next week however. Winning is a habit after all. Let’s hope we get a couple of centre backs and another winger over the line before the window shuts, I’m hopeful Marc Guiu will have an impact up front when he officially signs.