Sunderland 1, Wigan Athletic 2

Mar 16 2009 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

WEEKS of hard selling were undone in 90 minutes at the Stadium of Light. Sunderland’s players queued up in the matchday programme to extol the virtues of the club’s cut-price season tickets, then totally undermined every word attributed to them with a dreadful display.

In the run-up to the game – the Black Cats’ only one at home while the cut-price seats are on sale – manager Ricky Sbragia warned fans could not expect both points and pretty football at this tense time of the season. One would be nice.

Instead they got terrible defending, an over-cautious midfield and a striker who did not look especially bothered. And a defeat which moved them a point closer to the Premier League trapdoor.

The pitch was bobbly and the wind blustery, but not so much as to make it impossible to pass to a red-and-white shirt, or control the ball. Wigan Athletic’s players managed.

Recently members of the Black Cats squad have talked about the possibility of a top-half finish. Nobody has been fooled, and that is the problem. From the start you could feel the tension in the Stadium of Light stands. When the fans are twitchy, the players make mistakes, when the players make mistakes, the fans get twitchier. Once the errors become costly, nerves turn to boos, the confidence drains from those on the field and the task becomes that much harder. Each can blame the other but perhaps both need to do more.

One fundamental failing can be easily rectified. Under Sbragia, the Wearsiders have become not one team but two. Nine blokes beaver away to keep the ball out of their net, while in the distance two individuals plough lone furrows towards the opposition goal.

At first it worked well, and the impression that Djibril Cisse and Kenwyne Jones had no real understanding was buried under the weight of goals. But in Sunderland’s last six games, they have just one. The team’s net return has been four, five points and an FA Cup exit.

The problem has been a tendency to leave the pair to get on with it. On Saturday they could have done with midfielders alongside them, particularly with Cisse at times looking disinterested. Cisse’s 10 goals this term are a big reason why Sunderland are fighting to not get sucked into the bottom three rather than battling to escape it.

But you learn more about a character in the hard times, and the weekend’s lesson was not very encouraging.