Sunderland Preview

[waggy]

it's funny but most who complain are the poor souls who have too watch the poor fare that is put on the table,any result looks great in the paper,last night was as bad as i can remenber and thats nearly 40 years

[modes98]

it's funny but most who complain are the poor souls who have too watch the poor fare that is put on the table,any result looks great in the paper,last night was as bad as i can remenber and thats nearly 40 years

It wasn't a good night for football last night. First half we hardly got an attack going and they should have taken advantage. We are lucky they didn't and that we got all 3 points.

Early season we looked amazing and like a top 6 team, now the shambles we see week after week is just awful. Mixed into that however there have been the odd good performance, Chelsea & Arsenal. It's just keeping the same levels up against other teams.

[LeftWinger]

City (A), Derby (A), Sunderland (H)

Be honest - who expected 7 points.

I would have hoped for 5/7, but knowing Rovers would have expected 1 or 2.

United were rubbish against Brum - but won. It's what good teams do.

[frosty]

Dire first half, although the booing was unecessary. Despite the conditions the game improved in the second half, thank god we scored our penalty and their's was so poor.

Pedersen was improved again, the defence is still a bit of a mess though.

[1864roverite]

Having now thoroughly thawed out heres my take on the game. But before I go on, can I apologise for causing any delays in the Sir JW Upper stand as I struggled with crutches to reach my seat, and on the way out if you were behind tough you should have taken the outer stairwell !!

Got to be happy with 3 points as it was a desperate night for football, freezing, windy indeed it bordered on being Siberian wintry weather but both teams turned out 11 players and the game was on. A poor first half wasnt really bettered in the second, but in the tale of 2 penalties, Brad saved and Gordon didnt, leaving Benni to break his drought and snatch the points.

A few pointers from me on the game.

Tugay has been Godesque but has now confirmed that when he passes the ball forward he is useless. Every ball going forward was given away whilst every ball sideways or backwards found a Rovers player !

Roque was clearly tired and cold, it looked like he pulled up 5 minutes before the first half finished. Lets hope he is given a well deserved rest on Saturday in preperaion for his visit to the Breezeblock.

I thought The Axe had a decent game considering he is off to sunnier climes this week.

Samba clearly mistimed his jump to flatten the Sunderland forward, the most blatant penalty at Ewwod for an away team in 3 seasons and we have seen quite a few ! That does not excuse the performance of Rob Styles, who in my humble opnion remains a complete and utter fool and thats being nice !

Benni took his goal well but pleae no more fancy flicks when the simple stuff does much better.

Poor old Derbyshire, crocked after being on the pitch for a short while, lets hope it aint too bad.

Some very stupid bookings again. JHC even Tugay couldnt gt his deliberate handball right !

How Brad never got MOTM remains a mystery akin to the Loch Ness Monster ! The idiot whopicked it must have missed his second penalty save in 2 matches !

We are desperate for a central midfielder, lets hope we have a good signing in the next week or so to boost us before we go to Bolton.

Impressed with a 23000 PLUS crowd, even if we did have 3500 mackems. Funniest thing for me is the loud cher they gave when they got a corner !! WTF is that about then ?

...and finally, the enigma that is or was Dwight Dorke. I never once saw him run like he did last night whilst in a Rovers shirt and never once did I see him committ two tackling fouls that got him sent off ! Anyhow greedy mother deserved it !!!!

got to be happy with 3 points and a clean sheet. Same again against Bolton please

[den]

the defence is still a bit of a mess though.

I'm surprised you thought that. In dire conditions, how many chances did the Mackems create?

[Blackburn Ender]

I must be No. 5, then, Paul.

I think Mokoena played as well last night as anyone and better than most.

He plays a straightforward game, which does not attract the eye, but is effective.

We were bad, but Sunderland made us look bad. They didn't give an inch and, with a goal threat could have punnished us.

With the conditions, it was definitely a game for Bentley to be wide right whipping in some uncomfortable crosses and not wandering about the pitch looking for opportunities that never came.

A good three points in retrospect.

Get some kids in on Saturday, plus Pederson has to play. He's slowly working himself back into decent form.

[grizfoot]

I think it sums up how poor the game was when Friedel is voted clear MOTM by us when he only had one save to produce all game albeit a very important one.

[ace]

I think that the poll of MOTM should include a category saying " None of the above!"

[pksrover]

Matches my opinion exactly. When you need to break forward quickly he is one misplacing a pass or passing it backwards when there is no need to. Mind you Dunny didn't look great when he came on, spent most of his time running in circles with the ball instead of pushing on.

MGP should be dropped for the FA Cup game and get Treacy in. The striker situation is now a problem and shortly the CM area will be the same. Benni is the only fit CF and Rigters looks set for a loan move out. Gally has returned but i'm not sure he is up to much these days. It could be a case of Rafa having to step up to the plate. As for CM Reid is injured again, Sav is leaving, Axe is off to africa and hopefully will depart. That leaves us with Dunn and Tugs

erm...why drop Pedersen when he's finally finding his form again? I don't mind seeing what Treacy can do for Rovers, but its wrong to drop Pedersen now. He was one of our best players out there last night, when was the last time that happend? he has really improved the last few games, so it will do him good to play a team like Coventry, maybe getting amongst the goals as well. And with a few injured and unavailable players in midfield and up front for the weekend it would be silly to leave out a senior first team player that is actually getting back in to form. Although he is improving from game to game, a goal against Coventry will be a real confidence booster for him.

[modes98]

erm...why drop Pedersen when he's finally finding his form again?

Treacy deserves a chance. Stick ped on the bench or in a different role. We are struggling to field a team so he may have to go with 5 in midfield anyway. Nothing against ped just that Treacy deserves a chance to live up to his hype and this is the game for it, rather than against a prem team. He may be rubbish and then we can revert back to ped on the left but there aren't many players fit / willing to play.

I've been impressed in the run up to christmas and christmas period ped, definitely getting better. It's been Bentley keeping us afloat for far to long.

[Plastic Head]

I think that the poll of MOTM should include a category saying " None of the above!"

The linesman on the Nuttall Street side had a decent game....

[Fife Rover]

I can't believe Freidel is man of the match. He had nothing to do last night except save a very poor penalty from Whitehead - all he had to do was guess the right direction. It's not of course his fault - he can only have a great game if he has plenty to do. Personally for me man of the match last night was between Nelsen, Mokoena, Pedersen and McCarthy, all of whom had decent games in a fairly poor team performance. Given these 4 have been the butt of most people's anger on here for the last few weeks I'll now bunker down now for the reaction.

You'll not get any of that from me. Have to agree completely, although I don't know where the Jackman MoM award came from for Nelsen, and even though he did have a decent game it was still a long way short of what we all know he is capable of. However it was several hundred percent better than he gave us against Derby. For me the MoM should have gone to Gamst who JUST about edged it over Benni.

[Fife Rover]

not read anyone else's take on the game yet.

WERE WAS ZURAB

WHAT THE FOOK WAS THE AXE DOING ON THE PITCH

IS PEDERSEN HUGHES LOVE CHILD

CONDITIONS SPOILT THE GAME,BUT IT WAS VERY POOR FAIR

Well Waggy judging from those comments, I get the impression you were either not at the game or if you were, you were so far out of your skull that you were incapable of understanding any of it, and possibly still are.

[Fife Rover]

Agree entirely o2g. That's 2 of us versus the rest of the mboard.

Make that 5! (sorry only just got to Paul's post)

Dang it! Another one; make it 6!

[LeChuck]

I feel obliged to break up the love-in with Mokoena that's starting...

Whenever he receives the ball, his first instinct is to look BACKWARDS. For me that's just totally unacceptable for a Premiership midfielder, and was almost the sole reason why we couldn't cross the half-way line last night. We know Tugay likes to play short, sharp passes...but as soon as the ball made it to Mokoena (usually about 10 yards in advance of Tugay), he immediately sent it backward and the pattern would start again, until someone got bored and thumped it upfield.

[speeeeeeedie]

it's funny but most who complain are the poor souls who have too watch the poor fare that is put on the table,any result looks great in the paper,last night was as bad as i can remenber and thats nearly 40 years

I would agree that if you had to sit through 90 minutes of freezing boredom you'd have a right to complain, but the constant whining about this player or that player being sh!te and how badly(!) Rovers are doing just gets old after a while.

I think Mokoena played as well last night as anyone and better than most.

He plays a straightforward game, which does not attract the eye, but is effective.

We were bad, but Sunderland made us look bad. They didn't give an inch and, with a goal threat could have punnished us.

I like this. It raises some good points. Mokoena isn't Gerrard. His 'backwards' passing is an easy way for us to keep possession. I seem to remember David Batty rarely foraging forward and he won our player of the year award ahead of Shearer once. Super Atko did the same once he started watching Batty. All action midfielders are hard to come by, Mokoena does a decent job, not as good as Mascherano, but effective.

Sunderland are in a relegation scrap and were playing away from home. In order for them to stay up they have to work extremely hard and stop others from playing as they are not good enough. Remember us a couple of years ago?

[RovertheHill]

I feel obliged to break up the love-in with Mokoena that's starting...

Whenever he receives the ball, his first instinct is to look BACKWARDS. For me that's just totally unacceptable for a Premiership midfielder, and was almost the sole reason why we couldn't cross the half-way line last night. We know Tugay likes to play short, sharp passes...but as soon as the ball made it to Mokoena (usually about 10 yards in advance of Tugay), he immediately sent it backward and the pattern would start again, until someone got bored and thumped it upfield.

He only did that on the odd occasion he managed to control it. Most of the time his second touch was a lunging tackle. And I don't know about anyone else, but everyone around me in the bbe knew what was about to happen when the ball was laid back to him for that "shot" near the end. Let's face it, he's there to get the ball and stop the opposition playing. The problem with having him and an out-of-form Gamst is it doesn't give many options going forward. Although I do think I detected the odd green shoot of recovery of Gamst confidence last night.

BTW, to top off the really poor game, it was bloody freezing last night as well

[AggyBlue]

He only did that on the odd occasion he managed to control it. Most of the time his second touch was a lunging tackle. And I don't know about anyone else, but everyone around me in the bbe knew what was about to happen when the ball was laid back to him for that "shot" near the end. Let's face it, he's there to get the ball and stop the opposition playing. The problem with having him and an out-of-form Gamst is it doesn't give many options going forward. Although I do think I detected the odd green shoot of recovery of Gamst confidence last night.

He stops us bl00dy playing too

[winner]

I am very happy with the result of this game. It was a season critical game for us to win, because it leaves us only 3 points off Everton and right on the pace for a top 6 finish. This was just one of those games in which the performance does not matter, only the result.

Well Done all of the players (except Savage and Axe) and Hughes. Lets hope we can push on and hit 62 points + at the end of the season.

[OJRovers]

Can someone come up with the definative stats on Mokoena - i.e. win % with him, win % without him and compare that to the other central midfielders.

I think a few people would be shocked by the results.

[USRoverME]

I said it a while back, and I'll say it again, I think Benni is the solution to our midfield problem. Yorke has converted from a striker to an attacking type midfielder. Benni has had to drop back a lot in the last few months and seems well capable of holding up the ball at his feet, and sending it out to the open man when the open man arrives. Play him behind Santa and Derbs (ideally, ie when healthy) with a sav-Moko type partner to cover for him in defense, and I think we might just have our problem licked.

[Blue blood]

Not a great performance - although it's been a while since one of those - but a very welcome three points.

The good side is that we've played some rather mixed stuff over the last few games but have got the points which is the sign of a good team.

Thought praise is due for Pedersen, McCarthy Tugs (though he overcomplicated things at times) and the heroic Brad. First half was shocking, second was better, although am a tad disapointed that we didn't get a second. Mind you with our defending being cautious probably wasn't a bad idea, we did have a few chances, and Sunderland never looked like equalising.

On the subject of Mokoena, he really can't pass which hugely limits him. I'm not saying every player has to pass well, but in centre mid being able to do a decent pass is critical. And the Axe's passing is poor, not decent, most of the time. I'm not too bothered about how good he is going forward, but in his position passing is a basic skill which is needed. Decent squad player imo but not up to the no 1 defensive midfield role.

[LeChuck]

Yorke has converted from a striker to an attacking type midfielder.

Yorke sits in-front of the back four, a job he started for Trinidad and Tobago when his legs started to go. Yorke is more like a deep-plying playmaker now, very much like Tugay in fact...and we already have one of those.

Regardless, McCarthy in central midfield is madness.

[AggyBlue]

Can someone come up with the definative stats on Mokoena - i.e. win % with him, win % without him and compare that to the other central midfielders.

I think a few people would be shocked by the results.

I'd like to see:- Passes Attempted. Passes Completed.

Forward Passes%, Sideway Passes% and Backward Passes%

I don't think many of us would be shocked.

He's the most negative player in the Prem, bar none.