'We knew we could bully Sunderland' - Have Black Cats become too soft?
There are many ways to lose a game of football, and most of them you can accept as a Sunderland fan. When the opposition are crowing afterwards about how easy your team were to ‘bully,’ though, that is just about the last thing you want to hear.
After all, teams can be better than you are. Let’s face it, as Sunderland fans, we have had to get used to that over the years.
Occasionally there will be a major refereeing error to latch onto as well, or a hugely unfortunate slice of luck that went against you.
Sometimes the opposition goalkeeper might play a blinder or the other side were just that little bit more clinical. It happens, and it’s fine.
Bullying, though? That’s not okay for a Sunderland side. It goes against the one thing we demand of the players as a bare minimum.
“We knew Sunderland had a lot of young talent, but we also knew that we could bully them on the day,” Huddersfield winger Sorba Thomas said. “We knew what we could do to win the game, and we stuck to our game plan, and it worked.”
In fairness, Thomas makes a reasonable point in that perhaps a lot of it is to do with age. Due to Sunderland’s dedication to developing talent, it is quite literally men against boys most weeks.
Black Cats boss was probably looking at his bench for some midfield steel to stem the tide a little and all he would have seen was a 16-year-old.
“I felt Huddersfield came at the game and made it a really physical one,” said Beale. “Not in terms of fouling, just being physical in the duels, and they made us run back.
“There was a part of the game in the first half where we had to roll our sleeves up a bit and give a bit back, but I’m not sure we did that well.”
The statistics from the game back Beale up there too. Huddersfield won 10 more duels than Sunderland and more than double the tackles. It probably didn’t surprise anyone either.
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You look at the Sunderland team and there are some real battlers in there. Luke O’Nien won’t back down from anyone and you’d be pleased to see Dan Ballard stood next to you in any fight. Trai Hume is also one of the most wonderfully physical players in recent Sunderland history.
That’s probably just about it, though. The midfield duo of Jude Bellingham and Pierre Ekwah have size, but not a huge amount of strength yet. Jobe will probably develop it over the next year or two, and Ekwah should have it, but he’s a bit of a law unto himself.
Jay Matete has some, but he’s currently lending it to the Oxford midfield. Dan Neil is no pushover, but he’s not an enforcer either.
So it may just be a by-product of the ‘model,’ and in a year or two these same players might have matured and, thanks to lessons like at the John Smith’s Stadium, be the ones doing the bullying. Then again, they might not too.
Either way, what is clear is that Sunderland are seen as a soft touch physically and the fact they can be bullied so easily is going to make an already tough play-off chase even more difficult – perhaps to the point where it ultimately costs them.
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