On this day in 2014, Sunderland made it 3 derby wins in a row against the mags, completing the double for the season. It was a game in which we were completely dominant and Liam Bridcutt, on his debut, played the best game he ever had in a red and white shirt. Even Colback played well. Truly, a unique day in Sunderland history.
The papers made a big deal about the mags losing Yohan Cabaye a week before, who left for PSG, despite the constant threat to Mike Ashley from the Geordies that there would be an ominous ‘riot on his hands’. The riot never ensued and at the final whistle Tyneside was more impotently angry when compared to the year before, where they took to smashing up their own city and harassing police animals. There was no kangaroo court in which the cockney owner was asked to answer for the crime of keeping Newcastle financially solvent, instead only boos rang out around the stadium, a couple of morons ran onto the pitch and a handful of season tickets were thrown limply in the general direction of the pitch. All dejection at the Sports Direct Arena was drowned out by our 2000 strong away end’s jubilation.
In the absence of the French midfielder, the dynamic midfield duo of Colback and Bridcutt were able to dominate, with Bridcutt keeping play tidy and cutting out Ben Arfa’s forward passing in his role protecting the back four and Colback (as well as Ki) had licence to get forward, which they did generally very well. Our first goal came courtesy of a penalty, despatched by the inform loanee Fabio Borini. A great piece of play down the right that saw Bardsley and Johnson combine resulted in the latter being fouled by a clumsy Vernon Anita tackle. Borini, composed, looked as if he shared a joke with the ref, placed the ball down and coolly rifled a penalty in the top corner. Cue the Italian's trademark celebration, before running to the home fans and jumping on the advertising barrier, arms outstretched, screaming. Italian's do tend to get quite passionate in this fixture.
With such boisterous celebration, it could’ve looked bad , if the game had a chance of panning out differently, but the result was never really in doubt as Newcastle were so, so poor on the day. More neat attacking play for our second of the afternoon - Jozy Altidore flicking the ball on to Colback whose parried shot was tapped in by Johnson. 23 minutes in and it was pretty much plain sailing, we looked a different side compared to other first half's throughout the 13/14 season.
Newcastle brought one of the Ameobi’s off at the break in what was the first game they had ever started together. Must’ve been nice for them. The pretty crap and obviously unfit Luuk De Jong came on, with the mags having seriously lacklustre attacking reinforcements on the bench. However, it must be said we didn’t have the best of subs that day either – Scocco, Ustari and Vergini were all on the bench, thank God they weren't needed. Larsson and Gardener did come on to see the game out, which was pretty easy considering the game was over as a contest.
The game had been put to bed when Ben Arfa was dispossessed by Colback and the ginger maestro laid it off to Borini and received it back , duly sliding the ball beyond Tim Krul. It was a game in which our most average players flourished, Jozy was a handful all game and came close to actually scoring (really!) and Colback and Bridcutt were brilliant. Mannone was relatively untroubled, forced into one save by Tiote. Overall a great day for everyone concerned with Sunderland.
