Naivety is costly for Lee
Sunderland 2 Gillingham 2
LEE JOHNSON wants his Sunderland side to start “finishing teams off” after Gillingham struck late to earn a point.
Aiden McGeady had put Sunderland ahead in the sixth minute only for Alex MacDonald to level 20 minutes later.
Grant Leadbitter restored the Black Cats’ lead two minutes before the interval, but Jordan Graham equalised again as the game approached full-time.
Sunderland boss Johnson said: “I’m frustrated because it was naivety in the final five or six minutes.
“We have generally been good at dealing with that.
“We obviously didn’t have injured Bailey Wright back there, so you lose that organiser and talker in there.
“They had a line of five and we had a line of four for the goal – work that out. That is the boys needing to organise it in that situation.
There were too many times we got to the elbow of the box and didn’t produce the quality. We have to finish teams off.
“Styles don’t bother me. We have to deal with it. We were unfortunate we didn’t finish that.”
Gillingham manager Steve Evans was delighted with his side’s spirit to deliver a result that keeps his side six points shy of their opponents. Evans said: “We’ll take the point; the performance was the main thing. We were decent; we battled hard.
“We got back into the game, Alex MacDonald’s is a good strike, we hit the bar and were dominant. In the second half they had a little spell; for 10 minutes they were the better side but didn’t make a chance.”