Dick Advocaat: “We have to fight and have to work”.
Advertisement
There’s something deeply wrong at Sunderland. To that list, add the now annual Sunderland relegation battle.
City’s 4-1 win here last season ended a run of 4 successive 1-0 wins for Sunderland at the Stadium of Light. In 2013-14, Di Canio went as early as September, though Gus Poyet pulled off the most remarkable escape job of them all, before being himself replaced by Advocaat the following March.
But this itself speaks of the problems ingrained at Sunderland.
Since that victory Sunderland have only been able to claim one point from City in their past three meetings, which have all been in the Premier League.
Pellegrini, meanwhile, was able to hand a debut to Manu Garcia midway through the second half and the highly-rated young Spanish midfielder showed some nice touches as City cruised through to the next round. But in a most simplistic of models, there’s the technical and tactical aspect, and a collective mental one, a “team spirit”.
Fabio Borini thought he had equalised, but referee Roger East pulled play back, rather dubiously, for a foul on Nicolas Otamendi, the pair colliding while watching van Aanholt’s lofted pass. Manchester United’s newly-signed French teenager Anthony Martial scored twice in a 3-2 win at Southampton that took them above a West Ham side in third place and level on 12 points with Leicester City, who drew 2-2 at Stoke City.
The question is why aren’t the players willing to buy into the message? We will continue to try and play strong squads in this squad.
Illness to captain John O’Shea, who will partner Coates tonight, had forced Dick Advocaat to turn to the Uruguayan at the 11th hour at Bournemouth last weekend, yet the £2million summer capture again struggled to convince.
With no Manuel Pellegrini build up that I can see, we’ll focus on what the players have said instead.
Sterling got on the scoresheet three minutes later, while Sunderland grabbed a second-half consolation goal through Ola Toivonen.
Advertisement
Of course, it’s impossible to verify these tales, but that they’re plausible in the first instance says it all. How many missteps must a club make before it changes its philosophy? Firing Advocaat would merely be putting another sticking plaster on a broken leg and pretending everything’s going to be alright. But this could also be the year that they are finally put out of their misery.
