The Sunderland manager, Dick Advocaat, watched his team slump to 4-0 down in 36 minutes against Manchester City on Tuesday at the Stadium of Light before eventually losing 4-1, then chose to talk up his players and brush away any notion that Sunderland’s third consecutive defeat and ongoing misery might make him reconsider his position.
“I’m not as negative as maybe people expect,” Advocaat said. “Maybe you think I’m negative, but I’m not. The first 25 minutes I think we were very positive. I’m not really happy with the way we gave goals away but there is no sense to attach names to the goals. Everyone could see the mistakes, simple mistakes. But before that, at 1-0, we had a good chance to score. At the moment not everything is rolling our way. But that will change.”
Asked twice recently about possibly harbouring regrets about his summertime decision to return to the club having walked away in May, Advocaat has insisted there are none. He was in similar form on Tuesday night.
Sunderland’s season began with them going 3-0 down in 25 minutes at Leicester and on Saturday they were 2-0 down in nine minutes at Bournemouth. This time Sergio Agüero opened the scoring for City on nine minutes and Kevin De Bruyne made it 2-0 on 25. An unfortunate own goal from Sunderland’s stand-in keeper Vito Mannone made it 3-0 on 33 minutes and then Raheem Sterling curled in City’s fourth. There were 10 minutes of the first half left and Sunderland’s players looked shell-shocked. They have now conceded 17 goals before half time this season.
“I said to the players at half time: ‘Now you have to show commitment, not only as a team but as individuals, because if you go on as you are you will concede five or six,’” said Advocaat.
“The players worked really hard in the second half. I’m not angry because I’ve seen the goals we gave away. I was pleased with players’ 90 minutes – Johnson, Toivonen, M’Villa, they all played 90 minutes. The way Cattermole came on for the second half, he showed more promise than in the past – aggressive, simple.”
Sunderland, bottom of the Premier League without a win, travel to Manchester United on Saturday, then host West Ham before the international break. Whether another two defeats would alter Advocaat’s thoughts remains to be seen.
City had lost their two previous matches to Juventus and West Ham but Manuel Pellegrini was able to enjoy this evening. “It’s important for your confidence to win the game after two important defeats,” he said. “I think we needed to win tonight. It’s important to win. Maybe we didn’t deserve to lose the two games we did, but we did.”
Pellegrini saw his £130m forward line of Agüero, De Bruyne and Sterling in full flight at times. He then said he may be able to recall the injured David Silva and Wilfried Bony at Tottenham on Saturday.
