Phil Smith's Sunderland AFC verdict: Week of drama ends with frustratingly familiar shortcoming

Even by the standards of Sunderland AFC this has been a chaotic week but here it ended with something approaching familiarity.

Sunderland passing and probing, passing and probing. Getting to the final third, getting to the byline. Knocking on the door, but as has been the case far too often on the road this season, struggling to breach it. Controlling the contest and showing their promise as a team, but not being able to make it count.

Given the calibre of sides standing in Sunderland’s way this week, most would have probably taken six points from nine. And yet, especially given their dominance of the second half, this felt like an opportunity that passed them by and that is not for the first time. For the fifth time in their last six away games, they posted a significantly better XG than their opponents and yet did not win the game. 

Interim head coach Mike Dodds fairly pointed his finger not at the profligate second half but at the lackadaisical first as his biggest frustration. Sunderland had started on top but invited Bristol City into the game with a series of loose passes that at some point was going to catch up with them. In the end it was Anthony Patterson’s mistake that led to the opening goal in the end but as Dodds quite rightly said afterwards, there were many others who had erred either side. Dodds made no attempt to hide his frustration or to protect his players, saying that fatigue could not be put forward as an excuse when Bristol City had faced the same schedule. 

While he was right to say that avoid that ‘fifteen minutes of madness’ and Sunerland take something from the game, it’s also true that they had more than enough of the game from then on to take something from it. With Jobe Bellingham rightly rested for the first hour after playing 90 minutes back-to-back earlier in the week, they again lacked the penalty box presence they needed.

Dodds actually disagreed with this view afterwards, saying that he felt his team had been more creative and more dangerous than in many games this season. Max O’Leary did have to make a number of excellent saves, but they were all from set-piece situations. From open play Sunderland actually worked very few shooting opportunities inside the box.

Dodds has impressed hugely this week and is set for a key role in Michael Beale’s leadership team, but it has been telling that his decisions have quietly backed up the view put forward by Tony Mowbray in what proved to be his final and controversial press conference - that Sunderland’s four summer recruits up front are not quite ready for this division.

Dodds has talked up his four strikers, but he has not used them. Mason Burstow and Nazariy Rusyn have not played a minute, while Luis Hemir has not been included in the last two matchday squads. Eliezer Mayenda has made two substitute appearances, but both very late in the game. It was actually Jack Clarke that started through the middle here, but it took so much away from this side given his threat from the left that the move was fairly swiftly abandoned. Four months into the season, the guile of Alex Pritchard as a false remains Sunderland’s best option if Bellingham’s workload becomes too much.

Many began to question if it were Mowbray’s tactics holding back Sunderland’s strikers but it would be very hard to make that case now. Changing the head coach will not change the biggest issue this team has consistently faced: turning their dominance into a regular stream of goals.

For the most part, an integration period was to be expected and you couldn’t criticise Sunderland for adding players with long-term potential to their squad in the summer, particularly when the junior striking ranks had been so hit by youth departures in the years previous. Mayenda is raw but immensely talented, and Hemir showed real finishing ability in pre-season. Their time may well come, down the line.

The issue is that Kristjaan Speakman was unable to land a player who has been capable of impacting the here and now, which after all is the purpose of recruiting a loan player from a Premier League club as he did with Burstow. And while the challenges of the language barrier and adjusting to a new country were always going to demand much patience with Rusyn, a player with his senior experience must surely have been expected to have made a greater impact by now.

If Sunderland are to maximise the undoubted potential of this side then finding solutions in the January window was always going to be more impactful than making a change in the dugout, though it is clear by now that the decision to part ways with Mowbray was not overly about results.

After the high of the West Brom and Leeds United wins it has ended up being a pretty bruising week for Sunderland, with many supporters left disillusioned by the derby ticketing process and underwhelmed by the choice of the next head coach. 

Saturday’s disappointing defeat underlined how much good work has gone on in the last couple of years, to build a team that is consistently capable of going away to good Championship sides and controlling the contest - Bristol City only had two shots from inside the Sunderland box. Such is the structure of the team and the quality of the personnel, the truth is that it should roll on and continue to land results regardless of who succeeds Mowbray.

What Saturday also showed is that there is no quick solution to the issue which has cost them the majority of their lost points this season.