How good was Chris Rigg?! Player ratings as Sunderland slip to unfortunate defeat
Sunderland slipped to a fifth successive defeat in the Championship, with Leicester winning 1-0 at the Stadium of Light.
An early Jamie Vardy goal decided it, but Sunderland put in a good performance and deserved something from the game.
Here is how we rated the players.
Sunderland player ratings vs Leicester
Anthony Patterson: Really positive performance after a tough run of form – 7
Trai Hume: Very unlucky not to score with a couple of good long-rangers. Looked back to his old self – 7
Luke O’Nien: A really stupid and costly booking that will now see him serve a two-match ban. Decent enough otherwise but still not showing the form he did under Mowbray – 6
Dan Ballard – Nice to have him back and definitely should have had a penalty at the end, no matter how dramatically he went down – 7
Jenson Seelt – Some solid, some sloppy. Doesn’t look ready yet really but clearly an awful lot to work with – 6
Leo Hjelde – Not convincing, is he? Maybe needs to be judged at centre-back. Certainly not a left-back in the Cirkin or Alese class for me – 6
Dan Neil – Caught on the ball a couple of times but up against a really strong Leicester midfield and competed very well against it – 6
Pierre Ekwah – Quite a typical Ekwah performance. Plenty of promise but no real urgency with it. A frustrating player – 6
Chris Rigg – Outstanding on his first start. Lovely mix of quality on the ball and tiger in the tackle. 8
Jobe Bellingham – Poor first half, good second half when moved to a more natural position for him. Not being done any favours with this constant moving around positionally – 6
Luis Hemir – Going to be one of those strikers who do nothing if they aren’t scoring, isn’t he? I hope he’s not, but time will tell – 5
Substitutes
Adil Aouchiche – A real bright spark coming off the bench. Seems to have the knack of impacting a game quickly – 8
Romaine Mundle – Didn’t do anything except lose the ball in good positions – 5
Callum Styles – Didn’t really have much time to influence things – 5
Nazariy Rusyn - Same as Styles really – 5
Manager
Mike Dodds – Didn’t do much wrong but didn’t enchance his reputation either – 6
Referee
Sunny Gill – Don’t care what anyone says: He absolutely bottled a blatant penalty decision in the last minute. Anywhere else on the pitch, that is given and not a single person complains about it. Yes, Ballard goes down theatrically, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a foul, and a foul is all it can be given the defender is not in a position to play the ball, makes no attempt to play the ball, but initiates contact with the man, no matter how slight - 2