Top tier football is awash with motivational slogans and some are so trite that many players quite possibly ignore them. Yet Sunderland’s adopted motto – “Til The End” – has become so much more than just another piece of cod psychology.
After sustaining them through last season’s successful playoff campaign it has morphed into a true mantra, encapsulating everything that is so refreshing about this impressively resilient team.
Thanks partly to Granit Xhaka’s superb on-field leadership, Sunderland have developed a useful habit of recovering from losing positions. Here, though, they surpassed themselves, conjuring a memorable victory after swiftly falling 2-0 behind to a similarly determined, talented and rapid counterattacking Bournemouth.
Long before the end Regis Le Bris’s decision to deploy Enzo Le Fée in a fluid central midfield role had paid rich dividends with the Frenchman’s vision and passing incision repeatedly damaging the visitors. “I was very pleased with Enzo,” said Le Bris, whose team rose to fourth.
“Resilience is crucial in this league and we had the right connections in the team to recover. Many teams would have given up, but it shows my players have strong character. They are never beaten and want to fight.”
In January 2020, Antoine Semenyo arrived at Sunderland, then in League One, on loan from Bristol City, but the young winger barely had time to get going before the Covid pandemic struck and he returned to Bristol. PSemenyo, now Bournemouth’s best player, hit the ground running in the incessant, and torrential rain.
Seven minutes were on the clock when Semenyo’s sublime low cross prefaced Evanilson’s shot hitting a post, leaving Amine Adli to lash the rebound beyond Robin Roefs.
Eight minutes later, Bournemouth doubled their advantage courtesy of an exquisiteTyler Adams lob from just inside the centre circle. A goal of the season contender? Most definitely.
Yet 2-0 can be a tricky lead for teams to protect and, sure enough, Bournemouth’s cushion suffered a 30th-minute deflation. When Reinildo, schooled in plenty of streetwise arts during his time playing under Diego Simeone at Atlético Madrid, flicked out a leg in the penalty area, the left-back invited Alex Scott to foul him.
Scott duly walked into the trap and Tim Robinson, the referee pointed immediately to the penalty spot. Andoni Iraola, Bournemouth’s “very disappointed” manager, claimed Robinson had “lost control of the match”, but that penalty decision from a referee whose officiating, at times, annoyed both sides survived a video assistant referee review.
Le Fée stepped forward and, lifting his kick into the top left hand corner, afforded Djordje Petrovic no hope of making a save.
Darker arts were at play as Reinildo, well aware Scott had already been booked, attempted to earn the midfielder a second yellow card by running across his path and precipitating an inevitable collision. Robinson, though, was not buying it.
At the conclusion of a patient buildup at the start of the second half, Xhaka’s clever reverse pass permitted Bertrand Traoré to squeeze an angled, near-post shot through a tangle of legs and beneath Petrovic.
When a slick Semenyo manoeuvre led to Evanilson stabbing his deflected shot past Roefs it seemed Sunderland’s hard-won parity had been short lived, but an offside flag against Evanilson came to their rescue.
Sunderland made the very most of that reprieve. They took the lead when Brian Brobbey, who had just replaced Wilson Isidor, connected with a fabulous Le Fée corner with an emphatic, header.
Although Marcus Tavernier’s 25-yard shot rattled the woodwork Bournemouth failed to recover as Xhaka took every available opportunity to slow the game down. With Bournemouth’s frustration evident Lewis Cook was shown a stoppage-time red card for elbowing Noah Sadiki in the face.
If the game’s 11 yellow cards – five apiece for each team and one for Iraola – were, at least partly, testament to its intensity, an indisciplined Bournemouth were left with one point from their past four Premier League games.
