Now I don’t know about you, but I thought that was a much better game than the tedium that it seems I’ve been moaning about for weeks.
It had a bit of everything, from chances at both ends to plenty of incidents and what I thought was going to be imminent fisticuffs.
All good stuff, that actually made me feel entertained for once.
As for our actual performance, I think I might be a bit contrary here, but I thought we did better than of late.
Not that I thought we were great, just better.
Mind you, I’m not sure how much of that was down to us and how much was down to Sunderland being really poor. One of the commentators said that Sunderland weren’t the worse side and I’m minded to agree. But they do look totally toothless up front.
They were also apparently without three central defenders today and it showed.
Gabby took his goal well after some terrible defending from Cattermole, who got subbed at half time. We seemed to at least be creating chances and Gabby’s pace caused them plenty of problems. For me he was man of the match, but I found it a bit strange that he was getting involved in many of the incidents, as that’s not normally like him.
Then again, I blame the referee for that.
I don’t often mention the ref, but on this occasion I thought he was poor in that he didn’t take a tight enough grip of the players.
I thought the defence looked a bit more solid too. Vlaar seems to make a big difference and it was bit annoying that he had to go off, with what looks like a recurrence of his previous injury.
It was always a risk rushing him back, but I don’t really see what else Lambert could do.
This time I’m not blaming him.
And just to give a bit of credit where it’s due, while at the time I thought bringing Albrighton on to replace Vlaar was crazy, it did seem to work. It stopped Sunderland upping the pressure and allowed us to take it to them a bit more.
Which we did.
For once, I would agree with Lambert if he said we went for it.
Mind you it’s no more than we should have done.
There was a string of play halfway through the second half where we looked like Barcelona.
How nice was that to see?
Not that we were that good. It just demonstrated how poor Sunderland were, in my opinion.
Two final points.
The commentators accused us of timewasting as early as an hour into the game and it was mentioned later on. While I wasn’t convinced that we were much worse than we normally are at being slow, it did cross my mind that they might be right.
If so and it’s being used as a tactic, I’ll come straight out and say that’s a disgrace and I don’t want our club to be involved in any of that. It’s akin to cheating or at least not playing the game in the spirit it’s meant to be.
The commentator also mentioned that Bolton have posted accounts that show they have debts of £160 million, due to them not being in the Premier league for two successive seasons. And Lerner thinks we’re in trouble?
Take note Randy. How can you afford not to invest?
