Tom: Black Cats were so arrogant in Pompey loss

FORMER Burton Albion defender Tom Flanagan admits Sunderland paid for their arrogance when they were thumped 4-0 by Portsmouth on Saturday.

Sunderland went into the game eight games unbeaten and after thrashing Cheltenham Town 5-0, while Portsmouth had gone seven without a win and were beaten 2-1 by Burton in their previous match.

But, with another former Brewer, Marcus Harness, opening the scoring on his 100th Pompey appearance, the Black Cats were knocked off the top of League One.

“It’s embarrassing,” admitted.

“We’ve come away sitting in the dressing room and we’ve got nothing to say, we can’t say anything to each other. We just have to look at ourselves.

“We got our brilliance and our arrogance mixed up.

“We were too arrogant and not brilliant enough, whereas on Tuesday we had the perfect combination and put them (Cheltenham) to the sword because of our brilliance.

“On Tuesday we didn’t let our arrogance get in the way but on Saturday we went to Portsmouth, they were in a bit of a bad run of form and we want to stick it to them because we want to shut the crowd up and they taught us a lesson.

“It was a really disappointing day and, hopefully, it’s a turning point in the season when we now go six or seven games unbeaten.

“This hurts us but this has to hurt us, it can’t be ‘we’ll be better next week’ because we have set a precedent now.

“A lot of teams will think ‘we’ll do what Pompey did to them’ so it’s a big day and we have to learn.

“People will say we’re young, we’re this, we’re that but we are all playing in the team and it doesn’t matter what age we are.”

The game was played in torrential rain on the South Coast and Flanagan further admitted that Sunderland were complacent in failing to adapt their style.

Asked exactly what went wrong, he said: “I think the conditions, complacency to a man.

“We have been playing so well and have such a good style of football, we believe in it so much, and we almost thought we could just play our style

Flanagan

Tom Flanagan

no matter what.

“It was the wrong day for it, we needed to mix it up and the manager (Lee Johnson) said it in the dressing room before.

“It has nothing to do with him, it was completely and utterly on the players.

“We didn’t match them and that’s the bare minimum, and we didn’t do that.

“We can maybe say it was an offday but if you want to get where you want to get as a team and as a player and as a club there are no off-days and we let ourselves and the fans down.

“We want, everyone wants, to go somewhere with something and the further we go and higher we go as a team, the bigger the games, the bigger the occasion, it’s all about big games.

“On Saturday, we let ourselves down and people will question our big game ability.”

Flanagan is one of a “leadership group” in the squad, picked out by the manager, and had his say.

“We have all kind of had a bit of an awakening, so I just felt I’d say something,” he added.

“I wasn’t the only one who said something, a few others said stuff because we can’t always look to the manager to tell us what to do on the pitch.”

Flanagan, back on international duty with Northern Ireland this week, played 82 games for Burton between 2015 and 2018 and has now played 97 times for Sunderland.