Craig Gordon: Defensive wobbles are over

Oct 22 2009 by Mark Douglas, The Journal

CRAIG Gordon believes that Sunderland’s early season defensive wobbles are a thing of the past.

The Black Cats may be flying but Saturday’s stirring defeat of Liverpool was only their second clean sheet of the season – and the first since the opening day defeat of Bolton.

It was a run that was undermining some otherwise encouraging Sunderland displays and Scotland goalkeeper Gordon believes it is the sign of better things to come from the back four.

Gordon admits that the constant reshuffling of the defence was causing some uncertainty but believes they are now developing an understanding that bodes well for the future.

Steve Bruce has invested heavily to improve the fortunes of his defence – importing Michael Turner, John Mensah and Paulo Da Silva.

He has also spent part of his tramsfer kitty strengthening the Black Cats midfield with the acquisition of Lorik Cana and Lee Cattermole.

Former Middlesbrough and Wigan man Cattermole may be facing a lengthy spell on the sidelines, but Gordon believes that Sunderland now have enough quality in their squad to only go from strength to strength at the back.

"It’s going all right at the moment – there’s a talented group of defenders here," the keeper said.

"We have to make sure we keep more clean sheets. We managed to do that against one of the top four, which I think is possibly the first time we have managed that since we’ve come up.

"The more you play with each other the better understanding you have. You want to be in there,

settled, and be the regular starter and that’s the same for any player, particularly defenders.

"You get that understanding. They know when to step up to play offside, they know where each other is and that’s important."

And Gordon added: "I don’t think there’s ever been a stage when I’ve been here where we’ve had a very settled back four – perhaps the second half of the first season we came up with Jonny Evans and Nyron Nosworthy in the centre, Phil Bardsley and Danny Collins.