Well played reds

Fully agree Mark. We were by far the better side tonight. I,ve been there with eight mackems tonight and they all said we were the best team to have been there this season. Had it not been for the utterly stupid penalty decision, which changed the flow of the game, tonight would have been a different story. We totally out footballed them. The best I've seen us play in weeks. We deserved at least a point tonight. Sunderland were very bang average. Not a patch on donny. We are naive defensively and like many others I do think Toby is a liability. However if we can turn it up a notch from tonight we will have more good days than bad re results......and you're right......we kept winning the ball back and recycling......need to turn that into goals .

 

Like I said, I feel like I'm conversing with freaks.

 

You are nuts!
On the way to the game my Mackem mates were full of how they are going to walk this league and how much better they are than any team they’ve played. After the game they were totally chastened. They were very relieved that they came away with the points and thought we were better than them. Freaks the lot of them.

 

I always read your stuff with great interest and agree with most of your views and opinions and yes, in general we do tend to attract the freakiest of freaks on here. However, tonight I do disagree with you. Nuts aside, we outplayed them tonight. That happens in football .....sometimes the better team loses.
I don't think we've played well for weeks. No cohesion. No pressing. It's been quite lacklustre. Some would say that the sign of a good side is when they win whilst playing badly. I disagree with that in our case but tonight we played well and deserved something from that game. If we can build on tonight's performance then we'll have more good days than bad.

 

Completely agree. Brilliant game of football. And on another day we'd find another way to lose. Because what people simply won't acknowledge, which is the thing that really frustrates me, is that, unlike Sunderland, not only do we have great assets at this standard, we have equally huge flaws. We can match Sunderland's attacking play, but we can't get close to their organisation, their baseline standard.

On Saturday, Grant McCann said, live on Radio, that Cavare runs forward and walks back. I have never heard an opposition manager say anything of the sort before. I have never heard someone point out such an obvious weakness in the opposition. The opposition don't usually have one. Not one so obvious at professional level. Even after that, even after all our fans can see it, when it's on the radio for all other opposition managers to hear, we still play him. That's madness. It's bizarre.

 

They won 4-2 you loon

 

? How come you are so liberal with the insults tonight?
I know what the result was and am obviously disappointed. If you think that pointing it out somehow negates anything I’ve said then you are wrong. You reckon we have only played well three times this season and yet tonight it was third in the league playing second. By your own reasoning the results would imply we’ve been playing well. Can’t have it both ways.

 

I do get that. I do see that we looked very stylish at times. But we conceded 4 goals. It could have been more. As good as we looked at some periods in the game, in some areas of the field, we are are nowhere near the well rounded side that is going to get promoted out of this league. I'm maybe being too harsh because I read a few posts earlier this week saying they couldn't see us losing tonight. I couldn't see us winning. I couldn't pick a team in my head that could come away from Sunderland with a victory. I feel like I'm watching the emperors new clothes, every week. And as well as we performed in some areas tonight we conceded 4 goals and that's getting stuffed.

 

We’ve conceded one more goal than Sunderland so far this season. We didn’t get stuffed tonight either. Just a plain wrong reading of the game.

 

Just frustrated I guess. Apologies, probably being too vitriolic. I think the majority are massively overestimating us. I think tonight should be a time to take stock and assess where we're really at. Instead of that, many people have taken a 4-2 loss as proof that we're actually even better than they could possibly imagine, even though they imagined us walking away with the league title. And it's something I'm really struggling to understand.

 

To be fair to me, with that sort of retort, I think I'm allowed to say what I've said.

 

Well I’m not one who has ever thought we would walk away with this league or even that we will get promoted. Somewhat like my Mackem mates I think we’ve a chance of promotion and am happy that we are up there competing. Long way to go and all that. Doesn’t change my mind about what I saw tonight.

 

Lots of very good points, that I acknowledge. But I'm tired and going to bed. I'll have a think about what you've written.

 

? You must have had a bad day all round.

 

One of many

 

Well for what it's worth here's my reading of tonight, I think we started well and thought it was only a matter of time before we scored. Then the referee gave a penalty that never was. At 1 0 down it locked like we were feeling sorry our self's. We switched off and before we new it was 2 0.We we're like rabbits in headlights and could and probably should have been 4 or 5 down before Moore scored out of nothing.Sunderland then seamed to remember what has happened in the last 2 seasons and started to self distruct. If the Woodrow shot had gone in instead of hitting the post then I think there would have only been one outcome We started the second half well got the second goal and Sunderland took their strikers off and started to protect what they had At which point we showed our lack of a genuine leader and or a player who could pick out a pass to break them down. We huffed and puffed for the last 20 minutes but you could see the longer it went Sunderland were going to pick a pass on the break and make it 4.
The season doesn't finish here we have lost away to one of our main rivals they have to come to Oakwell.
COYR

 

Not really getting stuffed though is it if you watched the game.

 

It is ******* obvious to them all now though Jay - even little old me pointed it out over a month ago after the Charlton game.

"Both Charlton and Cov sussed Cavare out. How do I know? Well partly, my own eyes and partly because I had to hang around the Valley yesterday to wait for a lift and got talking to a member of the Charlton coaching staff. They had watched video and noticed how Cavare gets caught up field after his runs, is slow to get back and exposes Pinnock on his (weaker) right hand side."

I agree with your general thrust actually - we can look incredibly good because when our better players are in charge of a game we have periods/games where we steamroller the opposition with our power. We can also look awful for a team so high in the league because we have so many weak links, particularly on the flanks at either end of the pitch. Portsmouth and Sunderland on the other hand are less spectacular but much more consistently effective.