Sunderland (A) - Match thread

[CBRammette]

The most disappointing things at the moment are just how easily we are giving the ball away - we dont make them work for it at all and the effort then to get it back must be draining us every match - and our set pieces seemed really off last night particularly. 
 

Also I adore NML but not sure what is going on with him. I know he's had these patches for us before so hope normal service resumes soon

[Anag Ram]

11 minutes ago, CBRammette said:

The most disappointing things at the moment are just how easily we are giving the ball away - we dont make them work for it at all and the effort then to get it back must be draining us every match - and our set pieces seemed really off last night particularly. 
 

Also I adore NML but not sure what is going on with him. I know he's had these patches for us before so hope normal service resumes soon

Yes, it’s amazing how often we try to pass to a teammate completely oblivious to the opponent standing between.

Our passes are so obvious they’re easy to intercept.

That’s why we need to sacrifice pragmatism and pick our best footballers.

Goudmijn, Yates and Jackson need more ball because they can pass it first time.

[trappatoni]

Opinions differ of course but I do think NML hasn't been bad overall.   He's offered a threat at least like the early chance he created on Saturday.   Other than CBT he's the only player who looks like he can go at players 1v1 

 

[HorsforthRam]

22 minutes ago, richinspain said:

At the risk of sounding thick, I presume this is a "joke"?

I think this is a reference to the interview with Wilson on Radio Derby last night. There was a constant beeping (same as when a commercial vehicle reverses in the background) whilst Ed Dawes was interviewing Wilson. At the end of the interview, Dawes said something like “we better move before we’re run over..!”  So, yes. A joke. 

[Gabby'sThighs]

As expected really - Sunderland have better players and they'll finish top 6. They have a good line up: young, quick, great technique.

Derby were not good but not poor either. Worked hard but gave the ball away cheaply. flubbed a chance early on (can't remember who now) and Cashin/Fozzy could have scored late on. A better pass from Wilson could have put Jackson through. The subs made an impact and we put some decent pressure on them late on, albeit without creating many chances. 

QPR are in poor form, 1 win, 4 draws, 3 defeats, I haven't seen them play though.

I see some of the doom & gloom merchants are back. Games against Sunderland won't keep us up, it's gaining points against the likes of QPR, Millwall, and Oxford. Then November will be crucial.

[The Scarlet Pimpernel]

I havent seen the game but for what its worth the stats are quite encouraging for an away match aganst the leaders. I dont think points wise we are too dissimilar from last season.

[brady1993]

8 hours ago, Tyler Durden said:

The issue we have is that we are conceding an average of 2 goals every away league game so even if our attack was really potent we'd still need to be scoring 3 to win a game.

Which unfortunately it is far from. 

I was banging on about our home form artificially giving us a leg up before the Norwich game and that we couldn't be expected to win every home game but the poor away form was just adding pressure to this and here we are.

We've got to start getting clean sheets in away games as an urgency now cos I can't see our sterility in attacking changing any time soon. 

I think the issues all largely stem from the same things; poor ball retention, struggling to progress the ball meaningfully and poor positional play. When we get an attack going we actually look like we carry a real threat and our defence are in large part defending really well. But if your spells in possession quickly break down you just can't attack that much and you have to defend a lot more. Compounding this is something I'm not exactly sure how to term but we are frequently defending from a place of panic, essentially a failure somewhere else has left the defence compromised and having to try to bail us out. It's honestly a testament to the defence how frequently they are recovering us from bad spots. 

The annoying this is for a brief spell it looked like we were getting towards fixing those issues against Bristol and Cardiff. And I don't think it was because of opposition quality either. Ozoh and Goudmijn had settled in, balance looked right and there was cohesion building. Which changed the second Ozoh got injured. 

It sucks to lose three in a row but maybe if we needed a few games with Ozoh sat out and need a few games to figure out a few issues with selection and tactics it's better against teams we might have lost to regardless.

[MadAmster]

13 hours ago, jimtastic56 said:

Let’s sweep the pre-season friendly’s under the carpet as well . I have been to most of the away games and Warne seems to have agreed with me . He has switched things round for tonight’s game . 

Pre season jobs are, in the main, an irrelevance. Since my first Rams game back in 1961 we've had great ones and had a poor season, poor ones where we've had great seasons. They are no indicator of where we will be in the League.

[MadAmster]

The stats flatter us somewhat (49% possession, 13 shots to their 9, 5 on target to their 3) but much of our possession was short lived as we gave the ball away far too often. One of our many poor passes, this one attempted when not balanced and rushing it as there was no need for a first time pass, was intercepted by Jobe B who took 3 strides and hit a shot his big brother would have been proud of. Their 2nd a break down our right, a cross, Isidor crept in between Cash and Ossie and the ball was in the net. Isidor has been credited with the goal but I'm not convinced it was he who put it away. I thought it was an Ossie own goal.

Chirewa is going to be a decent player but last night he made too many mistakes. Felt for Kenzo and Ebou who were regularly outnumbered in midfield. Lots of under and over hit passes. Some awful dead balls sent in as well as some good ones. Phillips going off injured will see a return to a back 4 against QPR. This makes it sound like a poor performance but, overall, it was as much as anybody will have expected up there.

4 defeats out of 4 on the road doesn't look good but all 4 are currently in the top 8 and are in decent form. We'll win more than we lose at home and we have some of the "lesser" teams coming up on our road trips. Post match the usual mob of wrist slashers were out on social media. They are dumbasses. We'll be fine come May. Not going up, not going down.

[angieram]

I feel a little frustrated with the whole experience last night, both on and off the pitch.

Although the stats show otherwise, we never really laid a glove on Sunderland. I got the impression they were playing well within themselves, maybe with one eye on the bigger game for them at the weekend (Leeds will, of course, bring more.)

I also suspect Warne had slightly similar feelings, and his team selection rested some of the players who will be important to us in the more winnable game on Saturday. No point tiring Fozzy and Mendez-Laing out chasing shadows last night.

We did however, look fairly promising in patches and if the game showed anything it is how much our lack of quality finishers to turn those half chances into goals is going to cost us - at the very least until January. 

I thought of the players brought in, only Wilson really earned another chance. Harkness is tidy but not strong enough, Phillips is yet to look like a PL quality defender (I thought he should have held his position for their second goal - Bradley wouldn't have gone chasing out to cover, he'd have waited in the centre to deal with the inevitable ball in) and I've seen much better ball control and retention in our under 21 midfield than in Chirewa. 

With Nelson and Phillips content to pass sideways, there was a lot of pressure on Cashin to be the player finding players in space and it was perhaps inevitable that that he didn't reach the performance levels of Saturday. Osborn isn't a great outlet at LWB (how annoying that Sibley is warming the Oxford bench when he could have been playing a much better part there for us.) 

Adams and Goudmijn were amongst our better players but the team wasn't a cohesive enough unit to cause Sunderland any real problems.

Oh, Sunderland,  I'd almost forgotten about them. It's a very surreal experience sitting (yes!) up there in our little away bubble, seemingly remote from any active participation in supporting the team. 

The bizarre light show just as our fans were pouring up and out into the precipitous stands was both dangerous and disorienting, and their crowd was subdued and looked bored, quite a few leaving early. We only heard them briefly after the two goals, but for 39,000 (really?) they were far from impressive. As our lot sang to them "Where's your famous atmosphere?"!

[silverback]

at the risk of sounding pedantic, can we at least in defence go 4-4-1-1

With the front man being a large person in the O hare mould (ie a target) who can receive and hold the ball, with a Yates, jackson running around to pick the ball up and carry on forwards.

I was a defender in my playing days, and nothing is more soul destroying than winning back the ball, to have no one to pass or lump it up to. It just comes back over and over and the law of average says that sooner or later the other team gets a break and scores.

I was minded to wait on this critique but it seems to me we are trying to get similar players shoe horned in when they are not good enough in the position.

I would not play Yates and Jackson together, I would play Brown and one of them

CM only needs Ebou or Ozoh  paired with Goodminge 

Wilson right wing with Nyambe behind

CBT/NML or Jackson with Elder/ Forsyth behind

Pick any two from 4 defenders. depending who we playing/injuries suspensions.

Stick with it home and away for 10 games, let the players develop into the roles.

Probably all a bit naive in the computer age, but we need to have a goal threat or teams will know they only have to get a goal and defend well to win.

Set pieces will only get you so far, we need a wing threat to truly worry the other team 

 

 

[brady1993]

Haven't watched the full game back but based on that second goal, looks like we fallen into a similar trap as we did against Norwich and to an extent issues we've exhibited all season. Once again it looks like we've gone to man mark in midfield and once again it's trivial to utilise that to create space and pick us apart.

- Adams follows his man as he's going backwards and over to the left

- Goudmijn follows his man as he drops deep and also pulls over to the left half of the pitch

- Wilson has also gone to close space high up going into their left back presumably on instruction whilst this is happening.

- This means that there is a huge amount of space in the left half of the midfield, it means Bellingham can pick up the ball without pressure in the centre and there are now more Sunderland players ahead of him than Derby players (excluding Zetterstrom). Just look at how far away any Derby player is from him. 

- Their left winger can then pick up the ball in miles of space with a defence back pedalling and a midfield that hasn't been able to recover yet. 

- If you don't concede from there it's either down to excellent recovery work from a defender or the attacking team messing up.

Make no mistake though, this isn't on individuals. They are very clearly following tactical instruction and carrying that out. Nor is it a case that Sunderland are a good side, it might mean they convert the spot more often but fundamentally they didn't have to much of note to completely carve us open. Bit of players dropping to the left and a bit of player seeing where space is going to appear whilst recycling the ball. The issue is tactical. You just cannot afford to be this easy to create space against. 

[Magicman]

We so miss the power of Ohzo in a midfield. 

[Crewton]

16 minutes ago, MadAmster said:

The stats flatter us somewhat (49% possession, 13 shots to their 9, 5 on target to their 3) but much of our possession was short lived as we gave the ball away far too often. One of our many poor passes, this one attempted when not balanced and rushing it as there was no need for a first time pass, was intercepted by Jobe B who took 3 strides and hit a shot his big brother would have been proud of. Their 2nd a break down our right, a cross, Isidor crept in between Cash and Ossie and the ball was in the net. Isidor has been credited with the goal but I'm not convinced it was he who put it away. I thought it was an Ossie own goal.

Chirewa is going to be a decent player but last night he made too many mistakes. Felt for Kenzo and Ebou who were regularly outnumbered in midfield. Lots of under and over hit passes. Some awful dead balls sent in as well as some good ones. Phillips going off injured will see a return to a back 4 against QPR. This makes it sound like a poor performance but, overall, it was as much as anybody will have expected up there.

4 defeats out of 4 on the road doesn't look good but all 4 are currently in the top 8 and are in decent form. We'll win more than we lose at home and we have some of the "lesser" teams coming up on our road trips. Post match the usual mob of wrist slashers were out on social media. They are dumbasses. We'll be fine come May. Not going up, not going down.

The xG scores were very close - 1.0 v 0.95

I guess the big question is: what would Sunderland have done if we'd pulled a goal back in the last quarter? Reading a bit from their forum, they were bemoaning the fact that they panic and can't close games out. But they also think that they were cruising through most of the game and that we were "w*nk". To be fair, they're not deep thinkers as far as I could see.

[brady1993]

11 minutes ago, angieram said:

I thought he should have held his position for their second goal - Bradley wouldn't have gone chasing out to cover, he'd have waited in the centre to deal with the inevitable ball in

I think it's Nyambe at right centre back at that point right? Or are you talking about moving to double up when the Sunderland player gets in the box? To be honest I don't he's done much wrong there, the best chance to recover the situation there is to stop the ball going further. If he doesn't go over it becomes easy to beat Nyambe in a dangerous spot. 

The issues for that goal are well before they get to our box.

[jimtastic56]

9 minutes ago, angieram said:

I feel a little frustrated with the whole experience last night, both on and off the pitch.

Although the stats show otherwise, we never really laid a glove on Sunderland. I got the impression they were playing well within themselves, maybe with one eye on the bigger game for them at the weekend (Leeds will, of course, bring more.)

I also suspect Warne had slightly similar feelings, and his team selection rested some of the players who will be important to us in the more winnable game on Saturday. No point tiring Fozzy and Mendez-Laing out chasing shadows last night.

We did however, look fairly promising in patches and if the game showed anything it is how much our lack of quality finishers to turn those half chances into goals is going to cost us - at the very least until January. 

I thought of the players brought in, only Wilson really earned another chance. Harkness is tidy but not strong enough, Phillips is yet to look like a PL quality defender (I thought he should have held his position for their second goal - Bradley wouldn't have gone chasing out to cover, he'd have waited in the centre to deal with the inevitable ball in) and I've seen much better ball control and retention in our under 21 midfield than in Chirewa. 

With Nelson and Phillips content to pass sideways, there was a lot of pressure on Cashin to be the player finding players in space and it was perhaps inevitable that that he didn't reach the performance levels of Saturday. Osborn isn't a great outlet at LWB (how annoying that Sibley is warming the Oxford bench when he could have been playing a much better part there for us.) 

Adams and Goudmijn were amongst our better players but the team wasn't a cohesive enough unit to cause Sunderland any real problems.

Oh, Sunderland,  I'd almost forgotten about them. It's a very surreal experience sitting (yes!) up there in our little away bubble, seemingly remote from any active participation in supporting the team. 

The bizarre light show just as our fans were pouring up and out into the precipitous stands was both dangerous and disorienting, and their crowd was subdued and looked bored, quite a few leaving early. We only heard them briefly after the two goals, but for 39,000 (really?) they were far from impressive. As our lot sang to them "Where's your famous atmosphere?"!

That’s a good insight into last nights game . Nothing like being there to get a feel for a game . I hope NML has not let his age catch up with him . From the armchair his free kicks and corners were rubbish ( just like the rest ). But he seems to have lost the ability to go round people . It was noticeable how often their players dribbled around ours . 

[DiggerB]

1 hour ago, richinspain said:

At the risk of sounding thick, I presume this is a "joke"?

RD interview with Ed Dawes seemingly cut short by. Beeping transit reversing down the touchline towards him and Kane. You had to be there!

[brady1993]

5 minutes ago, Magicman said:

We so miss the power of Ohzo in a midfield. 

It's not his power. It's his ability to have another midfielder aside from Goudmijn who can keep the ball and pass to a Derby player reliably.

[Anag Ram]

1 minute ago, brady1993 said:

I think it's Nyambe at right centre back at that point right? Or are you talking about moving to double up when the Sunderland player gets in the box? To be honest I don't he's done much wrong there, the best chance to recover the situation there is to stop the ball going further. If he doesn't go over it becomes easy to beat Nyambe in a dangerous spot. 

The issues for that goal are well before they get to our box.

I think some of the blame for the second goal lies with Cashin who allowed the scorer to get past him to turn in the cross. That area was very defendable.

[IslandExile]

We just have no cutting edge. We don't create any chances and, even if we did, we wouldn't take them. Disappointing.