A loose connection was fixed but no one is quite sure whether it will prove to be a patch-up job or a long-term repair.
More than 44,000 people turned out on a bitterly cold afternoon to watch Sunderland win only their second Premier League home game this season and they were clearly minded to forgive Gus Poyet months of cautious tactics and boring football.
The manager greeted a victory which almost certainly prevented the Stadium of Light from turning against him with sensible circumspection. “The challenge now is to know that we’re not OK,” said Poyet who spent the preamble to Burnley’s visit stressing the need to “re-connect” with his north east public. “We’ve won a game, that’s all. I need to make sure we don’t get into any comfort zone. This has to be a turning point.”
There have been too many false dawns on Wearside for anyone to be quite sure whether the Uruguayan’s switch from a negative version of 5-3-2 to a slightly more ambitious 4-3-3 will come to be regarded as a watershed. Particularly as this was an uncharacteristically inarticulate Burnley performance during which Sean Dyche’s star player, Danny Ings, was substituted in a strop after failing to make any impact.
If that was partly down to another excellent central-defensive display by John O’Shea, Dyche acknowledged Ings had been so distracted by transfer speculation that he had considered omitting the forward altogether. “He’s young, he’s human,” said Burnley’s manager before reiterating his conviction that Ings will still be at Turf Moor on Tuesday morning.
It proved a much happier day for Sunderland’s strikers, with Connor Wickham drifting inwards from his nominal right-wing station to head home Anthony Réveillère’s excellent cross, before Jermain Defoe tapped in another cross from an overlapping full-back, in this instance the outstanding Patrick van Aanholt.
It was Defoe’s first goal since arriving from Toronto and crowned the former England international’s most enjoyable experience in a Sunderland shirt. Equally important as moving three points ahead of Burnley – and four above the bottom three – was his team-mates’ willingness to press the visitors high up the pitch before crossing into the area at every opportunity.
“My first games here we played very deep and it’s not easy,” he said. “But this was a lot better, we were a lot tighter, we broke quickly and got lots of crosses into the box. It was a massive, must-win game but this team’s certainly capable of scoring goals, especially with the supporters here. The atmosphere’s electric.”
The only caveats are that Poyet still found no starting places for his two most inventive individuals, Emanuele Giaccherini and Ricardo Álvarez, while the 4-3-3 system essentially leaves Defoe in the lone-striker role to which he is not ideally suited. Happily, he seems content enough. “I can play up front on my own,” said Defoe. “I’ve done it before, I don’t mind. I have the energy to work both sides.”
If such enthusiasm will please Poyet, he was even more delighted to hear a specialist tell him that Lee Cattermole’s latest knee injury is not as serious as feared and should sideline the team’s most important midfielder for no more than three weeks. “I was a little bit nervous,” said Sunderland’s manager. “But I’m happy now.”
Man of the match Patrick van Aanholt (Sunderland)
