Sunderland marched into quarter-finals of the Champions League/EFL Trophy with a 2-0 win against Port Vale. Assistant head coach Jamie McAllister met the press afterwards…
"If we keep creating the chances it'll come. It should have been four or five tonight, but 2-0, we are in the hat and it was a very good performance," said McAllister. “We were comfortable, we totally dominated the game, created some lovely opportunities and hit the bar a few times. You're always looking for that second goal to comfortable but I still think we had total control of the game, and then we got the penalty at the end. You can see how things are progressing. We played a slightly different shape tonight, a kind of 4-2-2-2 and it caused them problems because they couldn't really deal with the two up front and then the two numbers tens in behind, the two number sixes dominated the game, and the two full-backs were high and wide to give us the width and pin their wingers back."
McAllister added: "There were some really good performances from the lads who came in and they will give the gaffer a problem come Saturday because the lads who have been on the fringes and have not had a lot of minutes came in and impressed tonight, which was good to see. Aiden [O'Brien] was very good at linking the play, he made some good runs in behind, he was a constant threat and him and Goochy did well up top together, then Embo [Embleton] and Chrissy [Maguire] were good in behind feeding them. We played forward well today, we broke the lines really well, it was just that execution we lacked to get that next goal to be comfortable. It was a great performance, something to build on and it gives us some momentum, because there's no better feeling than winning games. I thought Dan and Scowy [Josh Scowen] gave us control of the game, but Dan got clipped on the ankle and at half-time it swelled up and he was limping so we didn't want to risk it and we took him off as a precaution. You can see what a good player he is, a good young talent. I thought Jordan was excellent. Him and Bailey [Wright] tidied up really well together, picked everything up and then started off attacks with good forward passes. He felt a little bit of cramp in his right calf, so that was why we looked after him and took him off."
