Sunderland found a way to beat play-off rivals West Brom following Tony Mowbray’s shock sacking at the start of the week.
I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think there was a huge amount that needed changing. If you look at us from a statistical point of view, our metrics and our numbers are really, really, good.
“One thing we spoke about with the players was the shot conversion and the chance conversion, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that we”ve had a huge amount of possession and a lot of chances and we haven’t converted those chances. The reality is we are three points outside the play-offs, we’re not in a bad position, and we’re not even at the halfway point of the season so there’s still a huge amount of football to be played.”
A different face, a different voice, but it could have been Tony Mowbray uttering those words on the eve of Sunderland’s game against West Bromwich Albion. Instead it was interim head coach Mike Dodds, who was preparing to take the team in the wake of Mowbray’s shock sacking.
The message was very much ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. And so it proved, as Dodds stuck largely to the same personnel and gameplan that his erstwhile boss had done and reaped the rewards as Sunderland secured an excellent 2-1 victory against their play-off rivals to go sixth in the table.
Sure, there was the slight ‘tweak’ that Dodds had trailed – Jobe Bellingham restored to the side and operating up front – although it was hardly revolutionary, with the midfielder having previoulsy played in that role at the end of August/early September before Sunderland had any strikers ready to go. The only other change was the return of Patrick Roberts in place of Abdoullah Ba, after the former had been given a breather at Millwall last weekend before coming off the bench to help the Black Cats salvage a point against the Lions.
Roberts’ introduction at The Den was part of a triple substitution that also saw Alex Pritchard and Bradley Dack enter the fray and help turn the tide. Against West Brom, it was once again the introduction of some extra experience in the shape of Pritchard that proved the turning point.
He had been part of the action a little over five minutes when his precision free-kick found Dan Ballard, who headed home to break the deadlock 20 minutes from time. And then five minutes from the end, when a West Brom corner had broken down and their skipper Conor Townsend had slipped to give the ball away, Pritchard’s clever throughball released Dan Neil to double Sunderland’s lead.
A headed goal from Baggies sub Brandon Thomas-Asante made the final few minutes more nervy than they needed to be, but the Black Cats stood firm to end their three-game winless streak and move into a play-off place on goal difference. With Sunderland still searching for a new head coach, the win against West Brom has lifted the immediate pressure on sporting director Kristjaan Speakman and owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus following the dismissal of the popular Mowbray.
