Cambridge United boss makes tactical admission ahead of Sunderland clash

Cambridge head into the game on Saturday afternoon on the back of a 2-0 home defeat to Charlton in midweek.

And boss Mark Bonner has provided some revealing insight into where it went wrong for his side – areas Alex Neil will be looking to exploit.

He thought the game got away from his side after half-time as Cambridge’s two-game winning run came to an end.

“In the early stages of the second half it became a basketball game, and that doesn’t suit us,” he said.

“The pitch is too big, too open. I think we blew ourselves up in the first 15 minutes and there was not a lot left in the tank after that.

“It was always going to be a case that the first goal would be quite key. It should have been us really; I thought we started the game brilliantly. We played some really good football in the first half.

“If you look at the statistics of the game a lot of them are pretty level pegging. It was a fairly even game, apart from the fact that the attempts on target for them are much higher than ours, so they made better use of their situations that they had.

“We lost our way a bit towards the end of the second half where it became a little bit disjointed. I didn’t think it was a great second half, but there were some really pleasing parts of that game.”