Sunderland (A) | PL | Post Match Thread

Simply put, this was one of those matches where we could play until morning and still wouldn't score a goal - it's inexplicable but unfortunately these games happen. In the second half we actually played well and every single shot just wouldn't go in, it easily could have been 4-0 but you need to know how to finish, right? Savio is an absolutely dreadful player, I hope he's transferred out in January.


Cherki should have been played centrally - he wasn't bad on the wing but he would have been more dangerous in the middle, especially when we were desperately searching for a goal. Now we need to sign Semenyo as soon as possible, he has to play against Chelsea. If he had played today instead of Savinho, he definitely would have scored.
 
Worst pitch I've seen in the PL for about 20 years, especially considering the weather hasn't been bad. Suits them so can see why they do it.

We looked like we'd had a similarly hard battle at Forest a few days ago and the injuries didn't help.

Sort of game that could have done with Rodri and Gonzalez in midfield, but I'd have taken a point beforehand. In a good position for the 2nd half of the season, so on to Chelsea
 
levets said:
I find it baffling that people actually believe that they didn’t try, couldn’t be arsed, or didn’t want to be there.
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Exactly. No such thing as just having a poor game now or feeling a bit jaded from a mental schedule at this time of year. Not trying, must be it.
 
A disappointing night, we never really looked like winning it because our usual clinical game deserted us, with Savinho and Haaland being the biggest culprits.

Can't really say that Sunderland deserved to lose, they battled well enough, and their aggression made it an uncomfortable night for us from the start ..... we still had the chances, but we squandered them.
 
Of course it’s not over, loads of games to play, but can’t help that sick bit ridiculous feeling that it’s not in our hands anymore.
 
VOOMER said:
What they were hitting were our players.
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I am not buying it mate, this team just cannot handle extremely intense press what Sunderland were doing to us in the first half. They simply cannot establish any control and they are waiting for the opposition to tire.
Nothing about hitting and fouling, this was a carbon copy of Villa game or the second half Brighton game when they overturned our lead, we are just overrun struggling to do anything.
Pep decided to play with "underloading" tactics where Erling is not involved in 98% of the game.
 
I just can't get my head around how slow we fucking are going forward, when we get to the penalty area we just go side to side, my mate thinks to draw them out, they was quite happy to stay in the area as we wasn't putting balls in, for them to come out we need to take shots outside of the area and then they have to come out, all this side to side and back won't help us
 
I think tonight shows that we should have been rotating a player in each game rather than flogging the same 11 every 3 days. Before even getting to the injuries there have been players who look exhausted physically and mentally for weeks. Both Nicos gone down now and it's not without warning as they've looked knackered for a while now. The best 11 is clear to see but there's no reason we couldn't have been making use of marmoush and RAN before they left.

In all of our previous title winning seasons we have been so good at rotating the squad to keep us fresh whilst klopp ran his teams into the ground resulting in them trailing off and yoyoing in quality every other season. We are flirting with that the way we are going.

I know the response will be "squad's not as good as it used to be". But we need to start figuring out how to use what we have got or rodri will be back out, nunes will drop, and god forbid haaland goes down.
 
Eaststander1 said:
A disappointing night, we never really looked like winning it because our usual clinical game deserted us, with Savinho and Haaland being the biggest culprits.

Can't really say that Sunderland deserved to lose, they battled well enough, and their aggression made it an uncomfortable night for us from the start ..... we still had the chances, but we squandered them.
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Won on xG. Something like 0.8 - 2.3 according to the BBC match stats
 
Tough one. Clearly a difficult team to play on their own patch. They play a game we do not like and had a physical advantage but City stood up and battled, especially in second half.

Quite how we didn’t score in the end but not first time we’ve seen that there over the years.

Shame injuries denied us the opportunity to field Doku, Rodri, Nico G & Sav at the same time.

Hope that proves to be a good point when we reckon up at the end of the season. I think we are yet to see our best XI.
 
I know a few like me are a bit disappointed with missed chances but can we acknowledge the big difference having Donna in goal makes. They only had 4 shots on target but 2 of those would probably gone past Eddie or James - he really is a big moment keeper and vital to our chances of silverware.
 
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