Striker shortage blame-game should not dominate the Sunderland narrative
As Sunderland were overpowered and outplayed for much of the game at Swansea before sinking to defeat, the subject of strikers was raised with crushing inevitability.
Let’s be clear from the start here: no one is saying that the absence of any for strikers is not a factor in any Sunderland game right now. Any team in this division is going to miss a player like Ross Stewart, and that is obviously compounded by the lack of a replacement to slot in.
The point is: it can’t be simply rolled out as a blanket excuse and primary cause for anything we are seeing on the pitch that we don’t like.
Against Swansea, particularly in that first half, there is no doubt that Sunderland’s chances would have improved with Stewart or Ellis Simms on the pitch. Both are capable of upsetting a defence and Stewart, in particular, is tireless when it comes to triggering the high press. It is difficult to imagine it would have singularly overcome everything else that was wrong with that performance, though.
Sunderland were completely off the pace from the first whistle in South Wales. They were second to every ball, slow to react to danger, and barely interested in tracking midfield runners. The set-piece goal that ultimately settled the result was as bad from a defensive point of view as you are likely to see. When they had the ball themselves, particularly at the back, they were careless in possession and surrendered it long before Stewart or Simms would have got involved.
Sure, there would have always been the option of bypassing the midfield and lumping balls up to the big lads up front, but I’m not sure that’s something any of us want to be encouraging from the team? We can’t say with any certainty that it would have been effective either.
It was, though, the defensive and discipline side of the game that cost Sunderland at Swansea, not the attacking side of it. The damage was done by a lack of desire to compete in their own half of the pitch, not a lack of quality in attacking areas. If you give any team in the Championship a two-goal head start, never mind one as good as Swansea, it’s not your attackers who have lost you the game.
Tony Mowbray this week actually took some considerable time in one of his press conferences to explain why he does not believe Sunderland left themselves short of a striker during the transfer window.
“Let’s not bring another striker in just for the sake of it, then when everybody’s fit, you’ve got three strikers, you’re playing 4-3-3 with one down the middle because your two wingers are brilliant and you want to keep them playing, and then you’ve got two strikers moaning in the background, getting annoyed because they’re not playing,” he said after the draw against Blackpool.
“If you play with one striker, why would you have three that all expect to play?”
I have to say that I personally don’t agree with that. For me, you give yourselves as many options as you can manage. I am not entirely sure that Mowbray believes it himself either. There feels like a real ‘towing the company line’ vibe about what he said to me.
I just don’t think the lack of a third striker should necessarily become the stick with which to beat the club after every defeat without one.
There won’t be a single Sunderland fan around who thinks we are not going to lose matches even with both Stewart and Simms on the pitch. I very much doubt there was anyone who looked at the upcoming match away to Swansea and didn’t recognise it as an incredibly tough fixture.
I suppose, though, that much of the frustration comes from the previous two home games. Win one, or both, of them – and it’s hard to believe Stewart and Simms would not have made a difference in at least one of them – and an away defeat to Swansea doesn’t feel as annoying as it did.
The club and their failed gamble on keeping Stewart and Simms fit has definitely created a rod for their own back, but it doesn’t – and shouldn’t – have to dictate the narrative every time.
There were far greater contributors to defeat in South Wales than the absence of a striker, and some of them are a lot more worrying too. They looked leggy, they looked slow, they looked a little frightened in truth, and the work ethic and discipline in that first half definitely wasn’t what we have come to expect from these players.
For now, we can put that down to inexperience and the natural inconsistency that comes with assembling such a young squad who are learning as they go. I suspect that is all there was to it. They were also up against some very good opposition.
The striker situation is a frustration for us all, but it will resolve itself. In the meantime, it doesn’t have to dominate every narrative or be blamed for every poor result. The players Sunderland do have available are not some bunch of helpless lambs who are completely useless without Ross Stewart or Ellis Simms to feed them.
They were not good enough defensively at the Liberty Stadium, or whatever it’s called now, to give the attackers – whichever ones were in the team – a chance to win the game. That’s pretty much all there is to it.
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