Match Day Thread versus Sunderland

But it has a great deal of relevance as to whether we are "physical, bordering on dirty".

 

Go back through my posts, that is not a quote of mine.

 

Had a better look at the goals conceded particularly in light of the criticism of Gillesphy.

It's Camara that lets his man run free to the near post for the first touch and Neil is completely unmarked at the back post to score. Must do better. Is it zonal v man for man marking confusion?

I don't know what Gillesphy and Broom are doing for the second. To be fair, it's a quick break but Gillesphy is ahead of the other two CB's and Broom too, which doesn't seem right. Broom gets done by Sunderland's very good Dajuku and again a runner gets into the box unmarked to score. It should probably have been Houghton's job to pick him up but he doesn't. I'll say it again, Houghton AND Randell for tricky away games? Gillesphey does amble back once the ball goes past him and I can see why Argyle fans were very critical of that, even though he would have had no chance of intervening as it turned out.

Sunderland's head coach Lee Jonhson was booked for protesting a Camara trip on the edge of the Argyle box which the ref didn't give. I can't see that Camara touched the ball: you know what he's like with those bean pole legs. Sunderland probably had a point there.

Ennis should have done better with a shot on 77 mins or had Joe Edwards free to his right. If you are going to concede two, you need to take those.

Cooper makes another bad error coming outside his area and somehow failing to boot the ball away, leaving Wilson to clear off the line under pressure from Embleton. It's Embleton who comes through the back of Wilson's legs in the process but Wilson gets up and carries on with time running out.

Embleton on the other hand mysteriously ends up behind the goal writhing in agony despite the only contact having been his boots on the back of Wilson's legs. With a few minutes left, 2-1 up, you know where this is going. Yes, he manages to drag his mangled body back onto the pitch and falls over again. Houghton kindly tries to assist him to his feet and a scuffle ensues while Embleton is the subject of a miracle recovery and walks off without the slightest sign of injury. Houghton is booked for his charitable act toward an apparently crippled player.

Now some have talked about "dirty to the point of violent" but it's that sort of scumbag cheating from Embleton that gets my goat.

Assuming the extended highlights aren't biased, we were clearly rubbish in the first 30 minutes and a bit better later on when we might have got a point. With Lowe gone, we need to be a bit more flexible in not going gung ho from the start in the harder away games.

Midden of a pitch by the way, our ground staff would be ashamed of that.

 

And we move on.

 

Just been looking at the Sunderland match highlights.....stadium was nearly half empty.....capacity of 49,000....attendance 29,000......Sunderland is a city of only 175,000 people.....I assume they have a far larger catchment area to justify a stadium were you can get nearly a third of the city's population in.

 

277,000 actualy

 

2011 census shows that the city of Sunderland actually has a population of 174,286.

 

always a WUM or two around...safc fan in peace here lads, just wanted to say those who made the trip deserve plenty of mentions, excellent turn out and support from them all.

after reading the full thread, i don't think either team were bordering on 'dirty' but physicality is needed in this league (we took too long to learn that)...once we lost gooch we had to re-shuffle the side and never really got going again, 2nd half was yours i would say but not a great deal in it while 1st half was ours, for some reason your team just did not fire.

also, i was about to post on our thread how the ref was doing a good job when he came out 2nd half and missed almost everything in sight and got the rest wrong (for both sides i hasten to add) so no bitterness there, it is something else you have to get used to in this league.

a lot seem to point out our stadium was half empty, well for those who missed it we were very badly run for near 10 years, then that rapid double relegation and i am still surprised we manage near or over 30k a game, we do traditionally get a lot of support from the durham area with lots of the old pit villages having plenty of fans..plus, we now have the richest club in the world just a few miles away

anyway, good luck for the season, hopefully we had our 'blip' and this is yours and you come out the other side as we have.

 

2

2011 is way out, boundaries have changed.
We have now encompassed the surrounding pit villages etc which are historical either SAFC or NUFC.

 

Thanks samwise for that....our green army travelled over 1800 miles last week...three away games on the trot....Cup to Rochdale...and League to MK Dons and yourselves. The team having played Wednesday night and not getting home till the early hours of Thursday....were given the luxury of a flight up to Newcastle and did some light training at Newcastle's Academy...that also included a 50 mile trip to fly from Newquay as well.

I think our smallish squad is stretched at the moment....plus a few injuries of first choice players isn't helping....but it was good to see that they dug-in in the second half and tried to salvage something from the game.

Each season your favorites with Portsmouth for promotion....maybe this year you might do it.

PS.....our local derby at the moment is to Cheltenham....just a round trip of 312 miles ?

 

Know the feeling mate, our nearest game is 220 round trip.
Teams from Manchester, Liverpool and Midlands have it easy.
Am I jealous, nah.
I used to do all the away trips but this season as a 75yr old and the old knees acting up, a 500 mile round trip to Cheltenham is the farthest I will get.

 

Re the pitch. It’s had 3 games in a week and awful weather. Not much ground staff can do. We’ve often had problems but you can’t exactly use that as an excuse as both teams played on the same one. Agree about Embleton miraculously getting to his feet and coming onto the pitch. Shocking, however, had you been leading 2-1 in the dying minutes and your player gone down off the pitch, chances are he’d do the same. Ive been critical of our players for not “bending the rules” as others have. If you say your players wouldn’t then I simply don’t believe you. They all do it. Time waste to suit their end game. Dive, etc.

I saw nothing dirty in the game. I think Embleton’s challenge was a “balls for glory” moment which I’d expect anyone to go for. Doesn’t make it dirty. Probably a tad reckless (and a yellow) but so we’re a few he let go for both sides.

Thought we should’ve been 3 or 4 ahead by half time.missed some golden chances. You just shaded the second half but we deserved to win.

Finally a massive kudos to the fans that were there from your end. Created a great atmosphere and deserve a medal. Good luck for the remainder of the campaign

 

I did say we'd become better at so called "game management*. We are top of the Fair Play League but within that, our keeper has had several bookings for delaying goal kicks as an example. Personally I don't like it but it's so common you end up shrugging your shoulders and saying "if you can't beat them..."

On the other side if the scale, Danny Mayor gets an awful kicking and just gets up and gets on with it. Full marks to him.

What annoys all fans I think is why refs seem to be blind to it, both foul play and what I continue to call cheating. We can see it, why can't they? Why don't they do something about it? If a defender can get sent off for a foul that prevents a goal, why can't an attacker be sent off fir diving to win a penalty?

I don't think we're disputing we could have been 5-0 down at half time. For me, we should have paid you more respect and tried to kill the game early on. But hey, ho, that just hasn't been our way since Derek Adams was sacked. Up to the last few games, it's paid off and it's certainly exciting to watch.