Sunderland's patchy form at Stadium of Light analysed after Cardiff loss

Transcript

00:00 I think it's a fair point and it's something that Mowbray raised as well,

00:02 is that there's probably a reason why over the last year or 18 months,

00:06 some of them have often been better away from home than they have been at home.

00:10 And that's the reason you mentioned the Southampton game in a way was almost like

00:13 an away game.

00:14 And the fact that they deployed quite a counter-attacking strategy against,

00:17 because Southampton wanted to come and try and dominate the ball.

00:20 And I think it is a totally different challenge when you are putting a side out

00:24 that has eight, nine players behind the ball, as Cardiff did for

00:28 much of the first hour, 65 minutes.

00:31 And I think the point you raise about the strikers is a really good one,

00:34 because I think that's definitely a process, not just in terms of players like

00:39 Burst or getting championship experience, but also, you know, the team,

00:43 bizarrely, because we talked so much about strikers,

00:46 the team has developed kind of without one.

00:50 And sometimes, to me, it's not a huge coincidence that actually at the moment,

00:54 some of them look a bit more fluid and a little bit more dangerous when they don't

00:57 play with a striker.

00:59 Because I think their rotations and their style and their movement is sort of

01:03 organically developed over the last year.

01:05 And I think if you look back to the end of the QPR game,

01:09 when I don't think they really had a striker on the pitch, I know Jemima came on,

01:12 but there was a period where you had Pritchard, Aushish, Clark,

01:18 and they looked so dangerous.

01:19 And so I think that that is going to be something that develops over time,

01:23 because I think at the moment, it's not just Burst or a climber,

01:26 it's not Hemi or a climber.

01:28 I actually think it's the players behind him, a climber,

01:30 having that sort of number nine, if you like, which they haven't had for so long.

01:34 So I definitely think that's something that will improve over time.

01:38 I think Mo Bria's comments after the game, like I say,

01:41 made it very clear that he definitely sees this as something, not as a major issue,

01:44 but as something that the team has to continue to work in towards,

01:47 because I think it's pretty obvious that they are more comfortable at the moment

01:50 playing against a side who wants to attack them and leave space.

01:53 And that's when you see players like Clark be so destructive as he was

01:56 in Blackburn. So, yeah, no, I think it's definitely fair to raise that.

02:00 I think that's definitely a process that the team's still going through.

02:04 I thought, Phil, that Dan Neil had a really excellent game for large parts,

02:08 but Sunderland missing Pierre Equart in beside him, I think, at the moment, would you say?

02:14 I think that, yeah, I thought Neil was one of a lot of players

02:18 who tied a little bit late on to me, not really a criticiser,