Phil Smith's Sunderland AFC verdict: Making sense of another dramatic day on Wearside and what vital win means

The feeling had been brewing all week that Stoke City’s visit to the Stadium of Light had the potential to be something of a powder keg and the dramatic announcement that Alex Pritchard would not be involved, just five minutes before the teams were announced, underlined it.

Since the departure of Tony Mowbray, the chain of events has been so remarkable and so relentless that to have any involvement with Sunderland will have left you both drained and wary of what lay ahead. Pritchard’s withdrawal from the squad as he pursues a January transfer did little to change the growing fear that this was a promising campaign unravelling before your eyes.

Not so, at least not quite yet. Football is a strange sport in which the tide can turn on the most unexpected twist of fates. Pritchard would have been named in this starting XI but instead the opportunity fell to Abdoullah Ba. Ba scored one, assisted two and brought some much-needed width to a side that had laboured a week previous. 

It was a day on which Michael Beale needed a bit of luck and he got it. After an open start to the contest in which both sides will feel that they should have taken the lead, Stoke City missed a glorious opening. Three, in fact. Luke Cundle got free in the box but took a poor shot, allowing Anthony Patterson to make the save. Bae Jun-Ho’s follow-up was somehow turned away on the line by Luke O’Nien before Cundle then missed the best chance of them all. How different might things be now, had one of those efforts gone in?

To Beale’s credit, this was much more like the Sunderland side that supporters have come to love and expect to see. Afterwards, he explained that his message on the training ground this week has been to play quicker, to play forward earlier and to be more decisive in the final third. It wasn’t perfect, but the home side were noticeably more threatening than they had been in any of their three previous defeats. 

Away from the enforced Pritchard switch, Beale’s other tweaks also paid off and that has brought him some valuable breathing space after the self-enforced acrimony of the days previous. Mason Burstow was a surprise recall to the starting XI and even aside from his first goal, impressed with his work rate and much of his link-up play. Beale also tweaked the balance of his midfield to great effect, dropping Dan Neil into the holding midfield role and allowing Pierre Ekwah to break further forward. While not Neil’s preferred or best position, at this stage it is obviously the best way to go with the current options. 

Stoke undoubtedly proved very good opponents for the day and the occasion, a good Sunderland win but not one that suggested a permanent solution to some of their struggles this season. Steven Schumacher has built a reputation as one of the most attacking young coaches in the EFL and since replacing Alex Neil, his focus has been on improving his team’s output in the final third. The upshot was that Sunderland had more space and more freedom to attack than they would normally enjoy at the Stadium of Light, underlined by Jack Clarke’s irrepressible display on the left. Stoke’s determination to attack left him 1-v-1 versus his opposite number more than we have seen in months, an opportunity that he was not going to let pass him by.

Schumacher’s approach was vindicated by the glut of clear chances his team forged in the Sunderland box, but the finishing was so poor that in the end only an own goal could get them on the scoresheet. It was a game that could have gone very differently, on another day.

The mood on Saturday night was far calmer than most may have expected at 2pm, though question marks of course remain about where this season is headed in the long run. While Beale offered something of an olive branch to supporters by praising their backing in a considerably more diplomatic press conference, his comments in midweek have left a deep sense of unease. While positive results and performances will yield something of a truce, anything else will quickly see tensions return to the surface and to that end, a trip to Middlesbrough next weekend looks a considerably more challenging assignment. 

Pritchard’s situation also casts a long shadow over the final week of the transfer window, a popular player whose likely departure to many supporters indicates an inflexibility in the club’s strategy that damages the prospects of promotion. With the club as of yet still searching for their breakthrough in the January window, there is on so many fronts an uncertainty about whether a strong start to the campaign can be capitalised on. 

For now, though, a rare chance to breathe after what has been a more dramatic and explosive start to the new year than anyone could possibly have foreseen. You suspect that this moment will be brief, and so perhaps we should enjoy it all the more for that very reason.

It was, above all else, a reminder of the verve with which this young team can play. That, at least, is something to take forward from another week of chaos.