Sunderland 2 Crewe 0 RECAP: Story of the day after Dan Neil and Patrick Roberts goals in valuable win
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After an goalless first half, Black Cats boss Alex Neil made three substitutions shortly after the interval.
One of the changes Dan Neil then broke the deadlock with an excellent strike six minutes from time.
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Hide AdAnother substitute Patrick Roberts then secured the points for Sunderland, scoring his first goal for the club.
Here’s how the game played out:
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RECAP: Sunderland 2 (Neil, 84) (Roberts, 89) Crewe 0
Key Events
- Sunderland XI: Patterson, Winchester, Wright, Cirkin, Gooch, Matete, Evans, Clarke, O’Nien (Neil, 58) , Defoe (Roberts, 64), Stewart
- Subs: Hoffmann, Doyle, Hume, Neil, Dajaku, Roberts, Embleton
- Crewe XI: Richards, Johnson, O’Riordan, Offord, Williams, Harper (Sambou, 74), Lowery, Griffiths, Lundstram, Ainley (Finney, 79), Long
- Subs: Jaaskelainen, Finney, Murphy, Sambou, Lawton, Salisbury, Porter
What to make of that side
It looks like Sunderland will start today’s game in a similar shape to the one which finished the game against Fleetwood on Tuesday.
It’s three changes from the side which started last time out, with Defoe, Gooch and O’Nien replacing Xhemajli, Embleton and Roberts.
Neil spoke yesterday about how Cirkin and Winchester provide more mobility in a back three, so it looks like they’ll play alongside Wright at the back.
That would mean Gooch and Clarke are deployed out wide as wing-back/wingers.
Neil also spoke about how he sees O’Nien as an attacking midfielder in the short term, so expect to see him playing just behind Defoe and Stewart.
Predicted line-ups
Here are our predicted line-ups for today’s match.
Predicted Sunderland XI: Patterson, Winchester, Wright, Doyle, Gooch, Cirkin, Matete, O’Nien, Embleton, Clarke, Stewart
Predicted Crewe XI: Richards; Johnson, Offord, O’Riordan; Lundstram, Griffiths, Harperm, Lowery, Agyei; Porter, Long
Crewe boss on Sunderland test
Here’s what Crewe boss David Artell said when asked about travelling to the Stadium of Light:
“Partisan crowd, it can work both ways. 30,000, it can work both ways towards our players.
“It’s fight or fly. Is it run away or do we go, ‘here we go, this is good isn’t it.’ What do you do? We’ll find out on Saturday.
“There will be three, four, five of them, probably more that haven’t played in front of a crowd that size.
“How do you react? I don’t know the answer but we are going to find out.
“All that is part of their development and part of their understanding. I hope it will bring the best out of them.”
Neil on Crewe
Here’s what Sunderland boss Alex Neil has said ahead of today’s match.
“We can’t have an arrogance about us,” he said.
“It’s fine when you do your job well and display that arrogance by performing well, but you always have to pay the opposition respect, and then go about your work in a really ruthless way.
“There’s no God-given right to beat any team. Do we expect to beat them, do we hope to beat them, do we go into the game with real confidence? 100 per cent, of course we do.
“But we know that if we don’t match them in terms of effort, in terms of running, in terms of having a strategy as good if not better than they do, then we will come up short.
“We’ve already lost recently to Doncaster at home, so the last thing we should be is expecting anything.
“You don’t get something from nothing in this game, you need to put a lot of hard work in, you need to suffer on the pitch for it, and you’ll then get your just rewards.”
