SON OF SOBS: BURNLEY

After last week's dizzying height at the top of the Prem, albeit for an hour or so, we returned to Turf Moor to try and double our positive start to the season. Thunderbird heartthrob Scott Parker hadn't been as busy as us during the transfer window, lets face it who had? Our new look Sunderland side was ready to put them to the test...

We sat deep to begin and deployed a 'bring it on' approach. Roefs claimed a few early corners as he showed his worth once again. Their man between the sticks was ex-Mag Dubravka. He'd turned us down in the summer apparently - didn't want him anyway, we've got Roooooefs!

9 mins in Big Dan took a knock and had to be replaced with Seelt. An ominous blow. A good job we've been bringing in some back up. We passed it around well in the early stages with Adingra finding Talbi, but the Moroccan skimmed his shot wide. We needed to be more clinical. It's early days yet though.

Then around 20 mins in Burnley opened the scoring with their first goal of the season. Only to have it chalked off after the ref reviewed it. Oo ah up the VAR, I said oo ah up VAR! Not something we should really celebrate but I'll take it where we can. We'd been the better team out the gates anyway. This woke the home fans up and the game was well and truly afoot. Adingra and Xhaka linked up well but no one was in the box to put the finishing touch on it. Granit was bossing midfield once again.

Omar showed how mint he was again by putting in a show-stopping tackle on the edge of our box. Our press stayed high and on the 40 minute mark we were winning possession and taking more shots - although we still only had one on target. Big Man broke into the box but was shoved off the ball by one of the boys in burgundy. Captain Granit found himself with more time than I thought on the edge on the box and had a pop himself which was sadly off target. Another half a second to calculate and he would have put that away, no problem. An added 4 minutes were clagged on to the first half, but we went in goalless. Stats were firmly in our favour, but stats don't win games. A great first half performance never the less.

Minutes into the second half our opening 45 minutes of hard work was mildly undone by a goal from the home side. Bugger. We kept our heads and pressed but the party was already starting in Turf Moor and Burnley began to soak up the pressure. Back to back wins began to look out of sight. The man in black then stopped play due to an issue with the floodlights. Unless one of them was going to fall over, I couldn't see the problem. Neither set of fans liked this and they let the ref know. So did Xhaka.

After Burnley struck a shot wide on 60 mins, eyes began to glare at the subs bench. A triple swap saw Paddy, Enzo and Wilson replace our entire front line - Eli, Talbi and Simon. Burnley saw the threat and brought on a couple, including an extra defender. Boring Burnley all over again. We pressed hard. One of the Burnley defenders broke themselves intercepting an attack from Roberts and Issy. RLB decided to double down and gave a first outing to Guiu with ten minutes to go. Hume tried his chance with a teasing ball into the box, But Burnley quashed it. In the 88th minute all hope for the afternoon was lost as Anthony rounded Roefs and made it 2-0.

Coming into this match I'd seen a horrifying statistic. The last time we won a Premier League away game in August or September was over 16 years ago.

The ref found 10 minutes of added time due to the floodlights, injuries and probably the VAR check. But we couldn't make it count. The stats tell a different story but it's the score line that counts. Anyway, That's our first defeat out of the way. Not a bad performance at all, but that being said - goals are what count. Now from cloud nine, now it's time to dust ourselves off and move on.

Mantén la fe

GPD