WHERE TO CATS GO FROM HERE?
Where do you go from here?
Stewart Donald has not seen much football at the Stadium of Light of late but perhaps this was a timely return. This was a performance, a defeat and a reaction that has been coming for weeks, a season drastically heading in the wrong direction laid bare right before him.
The story of the last 25 minutes can be summed up in one alarming, utterly damning statistic.Sunderland, behind in a crucial league game, on their home turf, could not muster a single shot at goal. The Black Cats have been unconvincing of late, to put it mildly, but this was a new low that should have alarm bells ringing in the boardroom. No response, no fight, no quality.
In the dying moments of the contest, fans made their frustrations clear. ‘Sacked in the morning’ rang out from the Roker End and quickly took hold around the ground, the blame then shared as ‘you’ re not fit to wear the shirt’ followed. This was meant to be the season of 100 points, lessons learned and progress made. 11 games ago, Donald made the biggest call of his tenure so far. It was supposed to precede a rapid upturn in form, the baton passed to a safe pair of hands, to make this squad, one supposedly of toptwo quality, League One ready once and for all.
They have regressed to the point where the relegation spots are now closer than the top two. Where do you go from here? Without doubt, something shifted in those final moments and unsurprisingly so. The long and short-term issues so clearly visible for weeks now unfolded in one of the lowest moments most fans who witnessed it can recall.
Sunderland looked simply not fit for purpose. Having looked tired in the opening stage soft he half, NigelClough’ s side were suddenly rampant and a squad short on pace and power had no answer. In the end, the 2-1 scoreline flattered the hosts.
In attack they had nothing. No identity, no pattern of play.
In Phil Parkinson’s second game in charge, they had thumped Tranmere Rovers with an enterprising performance. The Black Cats kept possession in good areas, their frontline was fluid and they moved the ball across the turf with poise and purpose.
In a matter of weeks, that confidence has evaporated and apart from a brief spell at the beginning of the second half, there was little attempt here to play with that intensity, in possession or out of it.
Sunderland created opportunitiesin the first half, but too often it was aimless and imprecise. Yet for the most part Nigel Clough’s Burton were rarely tested or probed by a one-dimensional opponent.
“We hadn’ t played very well so it was important to go in at half-time level and then after the break we were more like our usual selves,” Clough said.
“We scored the winning goal and created three or four more very good situations. We also defended brilliantly and restricted them to one shot on target. But when we raise our energy levels not a lot of teams can live with us.”
Sunderland certainly couldn’t. Part of the visceral reaction in the stands without a doubt stems from weeks of desperately flat performances. The response to those was restrained, to a degree. They were cup games, or games in which numerous changes had been made.
Benji Kimpioka’s late equaliser against Coventry City earned something of a reprieve, but that it had papered over a multitude of cracks was clear and laid bare just days later. Where do you go from here?
Parkinson has resolutely and robustly defended his squad throughout a testing period but it could only hold for so long. It was, he admitted, back to the drawing board. His team, he acknowledged, had stopped playing in the final 20. No conviction, no courage on the ball. It was an alarming admission.
A side that was supposed to take this division by storm is, all of a sudden, said to be in need of five new players come January. At this rate, the gap to the top two could be double figures by the time the window opens. In truth, Sunderland are paying the price for a summer of stagnation.
If this squad looks imbalanced and incoherent then that owes much to the period of stasis that followed the play-off final, a club in limbo as rounds of takeover talks dragged on with no resolution. It’s a club even now still lacking clear, day-to-day direction in key departments.
That limits any manager’s chance of success but even accounting for those shortcomings, it’s hard to comprehend where this group of players found themselves in the closing stages of this game. So, Donald’s gamble has backfired and aside from hope of a transformation in the winter window, it’s hard to see how it changes significantly. Where do you go from here?