I won’t dwell too long on this one; it was quite tedious and there was just one goal, which came in the latter stages of the game. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting us to take anything from this game because, despite Sunderland losing two on the trot, we always seem to be the team to turn other sides’ luck around. Oh, and we have not beat them in a league match since our 3-1 win over them in 2014.
Rosenior made two changes to Friday’s defeat to Bristol, with Regan Slater and Matt Ingram coming in for Cyrus Christie and Ryan Allsop. That meant we lined up as follows, in a 4-2-3-1 formation: Matt Ingram betwixt the sticks, Regan Slater, Alfie Jones, Jacob Greaves and Lewie Coyle holding the fort; Tyler Morton and Jean Seri below them and Liam Delap, Ozan Tufan and Scott Twine, above Aaron Connolly, who was leading the line.
I was surprised with the gaffer sticking Regan Slater as left-back; however, it paid off as he did a superb job at keeping Patrick Robert quiet and he was better and quicker at playing out from the back. But, what does this mean for Cyrus Christie? I think this was just a one off, however, if he did a good job playing that role, Rosenior should stick with it.
Nonetheless, in-front of a packed out MKM, it was us who came out the blocks quicker than the visitors, who, similar to most teams, were happy to soak up the pressure and wait patiently until we made a mistake, which we tend to do. Connolly had an effort, when Twine beat his man in the middle of the park, played it to Connolly, who, from 25-yards out, curled one towards goal, which was parried away by Patterson, their keeper.
That was the only shot of the whole half from us and after 15 minutes, Sunderland were on the front foot, however, they only had three shots off target to show for their stage of dominance. One from Hume, when a deflected shot from Bellingham fell into his path and he whalloped it into the stands; one from Jack Clarke after he makes a great run into the box before looking for the far corner, however, it took a deflection off Jones and just looped over into the top netting. And, finally, the last from Roberts who curled one wide from 25 yards out.
The second period was very dull and it was difficult to watch, especially in the cold. When we were on the ball, we just seemed to pass it around at the back for a while and none of our forwards were making runs. When we did get it forward, the Sunderland players would double up on our players and manage to take it off us.
As the match was dying out, Rosenior made a couple of substitutions to try and get some energy and creativity within the team: both Cyrus Christie and Jason Lokilo came on for Aaron Connolly, who had a quiet game, save for his shot in the first half, and Lewie Coyle. The latter was a strange change: Coyle put in an amazing shift; tracking back well, blocking every shot and not allowing Sunderland an easy opportunity. It is safe to say, this change came to haunt us.
Lokilo did make a slight impact when he came on, however, whenever he had the ball on the right, he would never take his man on, thus resulting in him losing the ball. Our best chances of the half came from Liam Delap and Tyler Morton, who both took too much time on the ball in the box, hesitated and struck it straight at their keeper.
Just as we were taking control and creating decent chances, it only took Sunderland once to catch us out at the back and create a dangerous opportunity, which they took in the 82nd minute, through Jack Clarke. Neil made a run down the middle and played the ball towards Clarke, who was able to run freely at Christie, who did not attempt to challenge for the ball, cut in on the edge of the box and curled one goalbound, which hit the far-right corner of the net. An exquisite goal, but he should not have been allowed to take the shot so calmly. From this point on, they stuck some defenders on and held out the game to secure the three points.
This was not the best start to the second half of the season and with two games within 6 days, one against a side just below us, we must make some adjustments or we are just going to keep having results like this. We are certainly not out of these games, we had most of the possession (57%) and equal shots (7), however, we are still unable to take our chances. Our next game is against Blackburn on Friday night under the lights of the MKM Stadium and then Sheffield Wednesday away on New Year's Day. I am going to that one, along with around 3,200 other City supporters, but I will not be getting my hopes up.
You can watch the highlights here.