The moment Gus Poyet had been waiting for arrived when someone asked why his players had “stood off” Liverpool. Surely, continued the questioner, Sunderland are synonymous with getting in the faces of their opponents?
“No,” said the manager, seizing an opportunity to drop his bosses a not so cryptic hint. “That was the characteristic of one Sunderland, the one with Kevin Phillips and Niall Quinn. The rest of the teams of Sunderland did not have any characteristics. They were rubbish. They were playing for relegation and suffering. I am trying something but we are miles away to a point that worries me.”
If Roy Keane, Steve Bruce, Martin O’Neill and Paolo Di Canio may be less than delighted to see their endeavours at the Stadium of Light trashed so comprehensively, it is hard to believe Ellis Short, who has spent countless millions on the squad, will be overjoyed either.
The message Poyet is trying to convey to Sunderland’s owner, not to mention Lee Congerton, the sporting director, is that he is the club’s first manager since Peter Reid to attempt to introduce a defined playing philosophy. In order to create this clearly identifiable brand Poyet believes players capable of fulfilling his sweet-passing vision must be recruited.
A keen politician, he used a subsequent question asking him to quantify precisely how “rubbish” Sunderland are to reinforce the point that significant investment is required.
“I don’t care. I’m just saying what I feel. We have to be realistic. Sunderland have been in the top-10 once in 15 years. The rest have been full of bad decisions and suffering. We need to find a way of playing a certain way. As a team we’re not adaptable and not intelligent.”
Brendan Rodgers would doubtless advise his Sunderland counterpart that every problem contains the genesis of a solution. Poyet once claimed that without Luis Suárez, Liverpool would merely be mid-table also-rans but after a difficult transition to life following the striker’s transfer, Rodgers looks to be heading back towards the sunlit uplands.
With Daniel Sturridge still to return from long-term injury, Liverpool may yet achieve the top-four finish their manager craves. They have now lost once in their past 13 games and a side lacking not just Sturridge but also Raheem Sterling – sunning himself on a long-planned break in Jamaica – Adam Lallana and Glen Johnson should really have won by three or four more goals.
Sunderland simply could not fathom Rodgers’s fluid 3-4-3 formation. Without the injured Lee Cattermole around to galvanise the Wearsiders, the fast improving Lazar Markovic was afforded space to shine and could have easily have added to his ninth-minute winner.
When Liam Bridcutt was sent off for a second bookable offence in the 49th minute it looked all over for Sunderland but perhaps taking advantage of Steven Gerrard’s half-time withdrawal with a tight hamstring, Poyet’s players staged a minor revival.
“We gave away 45 minutes,” said a manager whose side have won one of their past 11 league games and look set for another relegation skirmish.
“After that we tried. I cannot ask for any more with the personnel we’ve got. We sorted things out at half-time but the disappointing thing was that I’d expected my team to be able to work things out for themselves. But there was confusion about Liverpool’s system.”
Short and Congerton are entitled to wonder what Rodgers might have done in Poyet’s place. The Sunderland manager’s first-half tactic of asking his full-backs, Santiago Vergini and Patrick van Aanholt, to mark Philippe Coutinho and Gerrard while demanding that his wingers, Adam Johnson and Emanuele Giaccherini, minded Markovic and Alberto Moreno, backfired disastrously.
Quite apart from being hugely ineffective defensively – Coutinho, particularly, destroyed Vergini – Johnson and Giaccherini were prevented from using their talents to hurt Liverpool. It was no surprise Poyet’s team managed only one shot on target.
Perhaps it is simply down to vitamin D deprivation? Rodgers believes a holiday somewhere rather nearer the equator would do every Premier League footballer good at this time of year. If sending Sterling to the sun was an overriding priority – “Raheem needed a rest, physically and mentally” – there are several others at Anfield who would benefit immensely from a similar recharge.
“A winter break is something that must happen,” Rodgers said. “People talk about tradition but is it a tradition to see your best players injured and out for long periods? We must be so clever here because the whole of Europe has a rest. It would absolutely benefit every player, mentally as well as physically.”
Man of the match Lazar Markovic (Liverpool)
