Birmingham 2-1 Sunderland: Player ratings as Beale Ball bores again
Sunderland delivered an impressively clear demonstration of their perpetual thirst for self-sabotage as they lost to Birmingham at St Andrews.
The coach we all liked came out on top against the one no one wanted, and a good first-half showing and half-time lead were chucked away with the same careless disregard as Mowbray himself was.
Here are your player ratings.
Sunderland player ratings vs Birmingham (4-3-3)
GK: Anthony Patterson – Another costly poor parry and maybe could have been braver for the second. Far from his best right now - 4
RB: Trai Hume – Combative and as involved as ever, but not as good with the ball as usual - 6
CB: Luke O’Nien © - Good performance, but quite standard for him now - 6
CB: Dan Ballard – Unlucky to get booked and otherwise decent enough. He used to be good though, not decent. But that's a squad-wise situation under this head coach - 6
LB: Leo Hjelde – Some good stuff, some weird. Is that just Hjelde at left-back? - 6
CM: Jobe Bellingham – Could have played a 5-yard pass to your unmarked top-scorer in the box, but decided to turn into trouble instead. A supremely poor decision and a very costly one - 4
CM: Dan Neil – Sunderland's best midfield player by far, but nothing new there - 6
CM: Pierre Ekwah – Not really close to his best, but not being helped tactically at the moment either - 5
RW: Romaine Mundle – Probably Sunderland's most consistent threat, so obviously he was taken off pretty early - 7
CF: Mason Burstow – He was okay and had the ball in the net, although being caught offside on a dead ball is a pretty basic mistake to make - 5
LW: Jack Clarke – Scored a very nice goal but seemed a little hampered by injury after that - 7
Substitutes
Abdoullah Ba - Sloppy performance - 5
Nazariy Rusyn - Came on, was left isolated, had his runs ignored. Pretty standard - 5
Luis Hemir - Nice to see him, but with just five minutes left, what was the point? - 5
Manager
Michael Beale - Another one that has to be on him surely? Whatever he said to them at half time made things unimaginably worse, and then he waited an age to change anything. When he did, nothing actually changed - 3
Referee
Stephen Martin - Let things flow a lot but still wasn't shy in showing a yellow card. Kind of opposing concepts - 6
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