Match Day Thread Sunderland v Ipswich Town – Saturday 20th November 2021 - KO 15:00

Another issue i have been mulling over, is someone to play alongside Stewart.

Yesterday Broadhead started with Stewart in a 4 4 2 formation. Midway through the 1st half he switched positions with Embleton, who had been more of a midfield winger. Later on in the 2nd half Embleton went off and Pritchard was alongside Stewart.

IMHO, none of them worked (nor for LJ either i guess). So important January transfer a striker to partner/cover Stewart?

Ps Gooch played 4 positions yesterday (none that well)...wtf!

 

Ha. This guy lost all credibility (not that he had any) when he said they had no depth.

 

Were you happy after the game? Your football brand didn’t work, ours did. And loads of your fans trudging out 5 minutes before the end. None looked happy. Yet the Sunderland fans did. Get a grip

 

That’s right, I’m sure he’s had 3 or 4 this season.

 

Not pretty but a much needed three points in the bag. Hopefully a turning point for us.

 

Just found this from our unexpected guest on their match thread...
-well he certainly is devastated

"My reservation here is that for my first in person Town match for two years I’ll be utterly devastated if we don’t at least get a score draw."

 

I won't see the games until the 90 mins on today, but I too was wondering about your first point, we all want to see Stewart get more support and most on here went for Broadhead to play up alongside him before the game, my idea was to have Embleton playing just behind them in a central role in a midfield diamond as he has two good feet, and combines well with Dan Neil, this unsurprisingly not was not in the Guru's mindset from the kick off, and another slow start set the tone of the game. Considering the alternatives would you give these two another chance to form a partnership up front or go back to the tried and tested 4/2/3/1 which I don't think suits the players available as we have no natural wingers who can play 90 mins. Looking forward to watching without being on edge, it makes all the difference and often gives food for thought, but I would be interested in your opinion.

 

Official Highlights:
https://safc.com/news/team-news/2021/november/ipswich-town/highlights-ipswich-home

Full 90:
https://safc.com/news/team-news/2021/november/ipswich-town/full-90-ipswich-home

Access all areas: (Peter Reid at 1:50)

 

Fully respect Cooke’s quotes like, don’t disagree Ipswich probably deserved something out of the game, if it ended in a draw and it would’ve been a fair result but as he said himself that’s football

Although I wasn’t that impressed with them tbf, they reminded me of us under Jack Ross, plenty of possession but that’s about it, mind you I wasn’t impressed with us either haha!

 

I think we have been a bit cruel on the lad tbh and wonder if our great relationship with Norwich, where incidentally we proved that we can loose gracefully, has anything to do with his pain.

 

As I said, it was their big day out and they flopped, bless him.

 

Hi, you raise some interesting points, a couple of ideas...

To a certain extent you have to fit the system/tactics to players strengths and weaknesses. The cliché 'square pegs in round holes' is apt.

I reckon when all are fit we have some decent LBs and RBs, not so sure about CB pairings, that is a work in progress...

Atm we do not have imho a couple of good wing backs, so three at the back is not a viable option?

09 and Evans are okish as DMs. Dan Neil is our only midfielder who can pick a pass out, he has great eye for a through ball. We are leaking too many goals, so that persuades me to two DMs.

Stewart is far and away our best striker.

By the reasoning above, that leaves two places to provide some width and support Stewart.

So wingers, Gooch ( not a fan), Mcgeady (great but not 90 minutes), Dajaku ( good as a sub but not 90 minutes?). Then the likes of Embleton, Broadhead and Pritchard all not bad but are they Stewart's foil or Super Kev?

We should play our best players, that for me picks our starting 9, two more are added from 5 or 6 players depending who is on form and what the opposition is like.

Priority 1, in January is a striker, if Stewart gets injured we are in trouble.

 

3 if’s 2 but’s and a probably

Tragic. Let it go and move on.

 

Was nice to hear some decent comments from an opposition manager for a change.

The team that deserves to win a game though are the ones who score the most goals…were we the better team however? Not even close but I’ll take that

 

never said i was happy with it, i think even the most ardent bloke looking to wind us up can tell by our replies and posts that we are far from happy.

obviously you never saw our earlier games, we were playing good stuff and always on the front foot..for some reason we now seem to struggle with even simple passes, our game against burton was a classic 'sucker punch' as we played them off the park and they had one attempt and scored so right now we will take any sort of positive result it it means getting back to the more confident style.

i think ipswich, ourselves and pompey are seen as the 'big teams' in this league, other teams view our games as a yardstick to test themselves and certainly lift their games against us, the problem with that is the officials all seem to have decided that these 'big teams' are not going to get away with anything so in a way we are handicapped along the way even though we are all 3rd division teams.

 

We played really well at Burton and lost ...

... I wasn't too happy coming out of there.

We'll get back to playing the right way but I'd take another 20 'Ipswichs' right now.

 

100%

 

I keep seeing people complain about the performance. It was a poor performance, but an excellent result.