Dan Neil has spoken of his frustration at the Ipswich defeat, and discussed Sunderland's lack of firepower up front.
HELD OUR OWN
"I didn't feel a gulf in quality even though they are second in the league. We know they are a good team and a well-coached team but I thought we gave just as good as we got for the majority of the game. I think it comes down to lack of concentration sometimes."
GOALS/CONCENTRATION
"I think their first goal is a bit of a fluke, it's come off Pierre [Ekwah's] toe and fell to the boy [Jackson] in the box. Their second goal, Conor Chaplin is scoring a header and he's one of the smallest players on the pitch. We need to look at ourselves for that. I think there were times in the game where there were sloppy passes, I don't know how many times the ball got played out of play just unnecessarily. It's just those lapses in concentration and I said that after the Bristol City game when we got beat. There was that 10 minutes of madness [at Bristol], whereas on Saturday I feel it was spread out across the game. It's something that we need to look at and need to fix pretty quick."
FRUSTRATING WAY TO LOSE
To be honest I thought going in at 1-1 we were hard done by. I thought we played better and thought we controlled the ball when we had it. I think we had two really good opportunities, I can't remember if they were before or after the goal by Clarkey. To come in 1-1 after that flukey goal was frustrating but we were positive because we had gone toe-to-toe and if not had the better of them a little bit. To come out and concede in that fashion so late on is frustrating."
MESSAGE TO STRIKERS
"It’s just the predicament we find ourselves in. We obviously have brought strikers in over the summer. None of them have hit the ground running but we need to keep getting on to them in training, to keep working hard, keep improving. The shirt is there if they want it. It’s all about whether they want to take it and do the necessary things to improve, get better and show that it’s their shirt."
NO EXCUSES
“For now it’s very choppy-changey. I think the no striker thing is a little bit of a get out. If you look at last year we scored a lot of goals, if you look at this year we’ve scored a lot of goals and played without a striker. It would be nice to have a striker firing and scoring but we don’t want to use it as an excuse because we got in the play-offs last year without a real number nine. We need to take accountability for that as well.”
