That moment of quality came as we needed it
SUNDERLAND left it late to see off Gillingham – but Alex Neil insists the Black Cats fully deserved their victory.
The Wearsiders looked to be heading for a second successive goalless draw as the Gills stood firm, but in the 95th minute substitute Nathan Broadhead broke their resistance to score the decisive goal.
Sunderland were always in charge against the struggling Gills, with the stats showing their dominance. But that would have been of little consolation had Neil’s men allowed two more points to slip through their fingers in the race for a play-off place.
As it was, the victory lifted them back up to sixth and into the play-off spots once more, with six games remaining.
“I don’t think it was any more than we deserved, really,” said Neil.
“I’ve looked at the stats – we had 80 per cent of the possession, five shots at goal – and I thought the performance was very good.
“I know it took us until the 95th minute to score the goal, but you couldn’t be critical of how many times we got the ball in the final third areas – it was maybe the final ball, the final run, the final pass, that meant we didn’t create more.
“We had 25 shots on goal, five on target – that’s something we need to improve on – but at this stage of the season it is about getting the job done and winning the game.
“We were really dominant, penned them back in, and I’m not bothered who you are – it’s really difficult to break a team down when they put 10 or 11 men behind the ball.
“I’ve watched them do it against Ipswich, against Sheffield Wednesday, they have been really hard to beat, but we produced that moment of quality when we needed it.”
Neil said he expected Gillingham to put men behind the ball and try to frustrate his team, and he had worked with his players in training this week to prepare them to be patient.
He said: “What we spoke about before the game was ‘don’t get frustrated.’ The training this week has been all about frustrating the players as much as possible, to get them to the point that they know that that frustration can’t boil over and up with us losing our discipline or losing our shape or losing the way we play.
“What we had to do is find a solution and a way to break them down, which we eventually did. The goal coming in the 95th minute doesn’t help me.”
Sunderland have played with a back three in recent weeks, but Neil started with a back four against Gillingham, with Danny Batth and Alex
Pritchard coming into the side in place of Dan Neil and Lynden Gooch.
He explained: “The two full-backs were the two spare players in the game, hence the reason I changed the shape. I added Danny Batth and Corry Evans to give us a bit of experience in that central area, because I didn’t want the extra player behind the ball against Gillingham.
“It worked really well, and we needed that aerial presence to make sure we dealt with throw-ins and corners, because I felt that if they were going to score a goal it would be through a setplay and we needed to make sure we prevented that. When we changed it and brought Goochy on, he hit the byline three or four times which Winnie [Carl Winchester] wasn’t really doing and I thought he tired as the game wore on.
“Then Embo [Elliot Embleton] produced that moment of quality we needed and Broadhead got on the end of it. It’s not the first time, it’s probably the third or fourth time that we have brought players on that have affected the game and managed to get us a result.”
Training this week has been all about
frustrating the players as much as possible...
Alex Neil