Football 2010-2011

[TheGayTent]

Not that anyone other than me will care...but these two lists demonstrate pretty well our change in fortunes:

List 1

Valon Behrami

Benedict McCarthy

Radoslav Kovac

Kieron Dyer

Herita Illunga

Danny Gabbidon

Tal Ben Haim

Luis Boa Morte

Fred Sears

Junior Stanislas

Frank Nouble

Zavon Hines

Pablo Barrera

List 2

Robbie Keane

Wayne Bridge

Demba Ba

Gary O'Neill

Tomas Hitzlsperger

Lars Jacobson

Manuel Da Costa

[worm]

Do you have a squad chock-full of top internationals, or do you merely have a few middling international players as Wimbledon, Soton, Charlton, Wigan and Blackburn* have had in their better years? Someone not in dreamland is able to make the proper comparison.

(* that's excluding the Prem winning squad).

Your record signing is just £13M - and he's twice as good as your next best player. That's something you need to grasp, to not be suffering that horrible North East disease.

[worm]

I guess you watched a different game, where Sunderland had good players on the field and not the going-nowhere shit I saw.

[TheGayTent]

Sunderland were poor. However, to be fair to them and Worm, were it not for the following suffering from some brain fade...

...the ref, the lino, Mensah, and Mignolet...

...it could easily have finished 0-0.

[worm]

Sunderland were poor. However, to be fair to them and Worm, were it not for the following suffering from some brain fade...

...the ref, the lino, Mensah, and Mignolet...

...it could easily have finished 0-0.

[ralph250]

Sunderland's downturn was pretty expected. Tough period of fixtures combined with Welbeck getting injured end of Jan about a week before Bent was sold for an offer they couldn't turn down. Campbell out aswell, meant they've had to rely pretty much solely on one forward, who - whilst their record signing - is still only in his first season in the prem and no winter break like he would've had in France and Italy.

No options for Bruce to change a game, no real link between the midfield and lead forward like Welbeck was earlier (or Gyan to Bent), meaning needed more service & support from the midfield which has had the two additions of Muntari and Sessegnon that will need time to get up to speed, get to know their team-mates and vice-versa & get to know the league in Sessegnon's case.

Was always going to tough to build on their start after losing Bent and not having time to bring in a replacement in Jan.

[eFestivals]

Once again revealing your ignorance. Those teams are not equipped to be long term premier league sides.

and nor are S'land, as their yo-yo-ing has got to prove.

And their falling gates - probably from numpties like you, with the North East mantality that their teams are going to win the league despite being well well short of being good enough. Or even for 6th.

They had their day in the sun, but they are not 'big' sides with the capacity to get and retain quality players.

And nor are Sunderland.

Or are you having a problem with the reality of S'land having sold their best striker mid-se3ason?

Gyan is good, but so too is Gordon, Henderson, Turner, Sessignon, Onouha, Bardsley, Cattermole and Welbeck. All of these players are in his league and they are all to be drawn upon in building an attacking brand of football. Your analysis just shows how ignorant you are.

Gyan is a £13M player, not more.

The rest are sub-£10m players. You're kidding yourself if you're thinking differently.

And that's precisely why Sunderland are where they are, and not because Bruce is shit.

[eFestivals]

Sunderland were poor. However, to be fair to them and Worm, were it not for the following suffering from some brain fade...

...the ref, the lino, Mensah, and Mignolet...

...it could easily have finished 0-0.

It could have finished 0-0, I agree.

What it couldn't have finished as was a Sunderland win. That would have needed them to actually create a goal threat rather than no goal threats at all.

Liverpool got to win - aside from the dodgy linesman (Bruce: "these things happen" ) - because they did create goal threats. Everything else aside, Liverpool were deserved winners - anything else would be a re-writing of what happened on the pitch from legitimate play.

[ralph250]

Thank you.

I'd suggest that we were getting into it before the penalty too. As I say, some very intricate play was beginning to develop through Welbeck, Richardson and Gyan, and to a lesser extent Malbranque, until the penalty decision. Couldn't get it back after that. Maybe we're a 'rythm team', as they say in the states.

[eFestivals]

Not sure how much effort would've been made into trying to retain Bent, I'd guess that Sunderland were pretty willing sellers for 24 big ones.

absolutely - but that merely gets to show that the club know where they are right now, even if their fans want to have the same disease as they seem to suffer from permanently just down the road.

A club that was on the up in the way worm wants to think they are would have kept him. A club rarely gets to improve by selling it's best players.

[TheGayTent]

A club rarely gets to improve by selling it's best players.

[ralph250]

Not that anyone other than me will care...but these two lists demonstrate pretty well our change in fortunes:

List 1

Valon Behrami

[worm]

The cross that evaded Richardson as you say was probably the closest, and were a couple elaborate backheels on the edge of the box that didn't quite come off, but you were causing Liverpool a few problems until the pen. Liverpool had the decent counter opportunity when Suarez played a give n go with Carroll but didn't receive the return, Carroll having to check back and lay it off.

Edited March 21, 2011 by worm

[eFestivals]

With Liverpool being the exception that proves the rule?

lol - yep.

I originally wrote that without the 'rarely' included, then thought of Liverpool and added the 'rarely' in.

But the difference is that Torres is - despite his often poor form with Liverpool - just about universally thought of as a world class player, while the same isn't true for Bent (in fact he's about a complete opposite, he's thought quite poorly of despite his scoring record). If Bent had the reputation of a Torres he'd have not been at Sunderland in the first place.

It ends up meaning that the two teams are operating in completely different places, and because of that what they're both able to do is very different - for example, if S'land felt able to go and spend the Bent money (which they didn't, because they're operating in a different financial league) they very probably wouldn't have been able to attract a player of Suariz's quality anyway.

It's because of all this that I think that worm is being particularly daft. Sunderland are performing at around their level (and probably actually over-achieving), they're not the failure that he wants to think them as being.

[worm]

absolutely - but that merely gets to show that the club know where they are right now, even if their fans want to have the same disease as they seem to suffer from permanently just down the road.

A club that was on the up in the way worm wants to think they are would have kept him. A club rarely gets to improve by selling it's best players.

Edited March 21, 2011 by worm

[worm]

What it couldn't have finished as was a Sunderland win. That would have needed them to actually create a goal threat rather than no goal threats at all

Edited March 21, 2011 by worm

[TheGayTent]

Thought he was pretty decent when he first arrived. Good engine. Did he just never fully recover formwise after he got injured that time?

Edited March 21, 2011 by TheGayTent

[eFestivals]

No, that's just your innate stupidity showing again. Survival in football is about selling, just as much as retaining. Villa offered us a sizeable fee, as did Stoke for Jones. We had replacements. Those replacements got long term injuries at the same time. Bad fortune, in the short term.

sure, survival might mean selling - but that gets to show that that financial survival was of more importance than building up the squad.

And while it might be 'bad fortune' that the alternatives got injured, they're defo lesser alternatives at this moment in time, and a team who were determined to be on-the-up would have factored in that risk when making the consideration whether to sell or not, and if building up the squad was of greater importance then they'd have made a different decision over selling or at least gone out and spent the money that came in - which they didn't.

The reality is that they're competing at a completely different level to the likes of Liverpool, and that reality comes to get displayed in things like yesterday's loss and their falling league position.

Sunderland are doing great at building themselves up to a better place than they've been in recent years, but they have limits to how far and how fast they can do that (as well as how far they can take themselves unless they get a proper sugar daddy). Just like the stereotypical Newc fans you're getting waaaaay ahead of yourself in thinking that they should be doing better than they are right now.

[eFestivals]

Like the goal threat posed before the penalty?

what "goal threat"? A great ball across the box is a nothing when there's no one close to getting to it.

Like the goal opportunities that would have occured had Liverpool not closed up on scoring a penalty.

you were getting no box penetration before the penalty and the injuries. You were getting more of the ball but making no threat.

Meanwhile, Liverpool were getting less of the ball but making threats (again, before the penalty and injuries). Little about anything changed with the game after that penalty and injuries, aside from Liverpool coming more into the game - which they would have anyway after that first 20 minutes. The first 20 minutes was the standard losers starting flurry that doesn't last unless they perhaps score - something you didn't get a sniff of doing, so it wasn't going to happen.

You've no idea of how games operate do you. 1-0 down to Liverpool is hard to recapture, due to the threat of the break. Bramble was left exposed against their thick geordie bastard.

The game was killed.

The game was killed for Sunderland by the lack of attacking threat by Sunderland from the moment of kick-off. The game played out much as it would have done without the penalty or injuries - Sunderland just didn't turn up as an attacking force. They can play better than that, but they've also done the same thing many times both this season and last.

And similarly, that was one of the worse Liverpool Prem performances under Kenny - so if you want to dream of S'land at their best then you need to give the same dreams to how Liverpool played as well.

On another day without those injuries and penalty you might have drawn, but Sunderland just didn't have enough there to win that match.

Still, your beer lasts longer when you've been crying in it.

Edited March 21, 2011 by eFestivals

[strummer77]

Confusing me with someone else I think. I'm devastated.

Bollocks. Until the penalty, it looked like a case of Sunderland's creativity versus Liverpool's attrition. And Sunderland were winning the battle right up until an unpressurised Mensah gave them a free kick, which the scouse ref turned into a penalty for them. Liverpool were knackered and turned to the long ball in the second half, which was effective against a clueless Bramble. Suarez reverted to diving and being an antogonistic twat (a trait he used effectively for Ajax) until Ali came on and released him for the goal. Without Welbeck, we lost any chance at both going forward and keeping the back safe.

[worm]

We were always going to improve- as you said yourself. Muscle memory and all that, once we shook off the midweek blues we would have given you a game.

Edited March 21, 2011 by worm

[worm]

A load of trolling bollocks fit for a playground........

[eFestivals]

Yes, yes, yes Neil. I'm sure you're right and everyone else is wrong.

Simple fact is that few have even sided with one aspect of your take on the game. Most have sided with most of my take.

Get over it. Sunderland are what they are, and not what you dream they are.

[TheGayTent]

Who are the only three players to have been awarded Premier League winners medals with two different clubs?

[worm]

Who are the only three players to have been awarded Premier League winners medals with two different clubs?