Sunderland midfielder delivers dressing room verdict on Cardiff City win and the big positive it showed
Sunderland opened up their Championship campaign with a 2-0 win over Cardiff City
Dan Neil admits Sunderland weren’t at their best at Cardiff City but says there were signs of their development as a team on show.
Cardiff City controlled large parts of the game but Sunderland took an early lead through Luke O’Nien and Jack Clarke secured the points with a late goal. Neil expects Sunderland to be a more resilient side out of possession this season and believed that was on show across what was a difficult opening-day fixture.
“The first game is always a really tough one because you don’t know what team you’re going to come up against,” Neil said.
“That was a very different Cardiff to the one we’ve played against in the last two years. In the previous years, they were very direct and sat off out of possession, but they were there complete opposite today. There was lots of fluidity and good movement from them, and they tried to press us. We might have lost that type of game last year. We weren’t at our best today, I think that’s obvious, but I think that just shows how far the group has come. I think we’d have struggled to win that last season, but we showed the togetherness to make sure that we came out with a win.
“You could see the game model that we’re trying to work on,” he added.
“When we get breached, it’s ‘get four men behind the ball’, defend the box and defend the goal. Last year, we probably didn’t do that enough and were almost thinking about going forward again. I thought we always looked dangerous in transition with the players we’ve got in attacking areas. They’ve got pace and they can damage teams. Getting that first goal was massive because it allowed us to sit in and almost encourage them on, knowing we could hit them on the counter-attack. Then that second goal really killed the game off.”
The day was a proud one for Neil, his first in his official capacity as team captain.
“I was buzzing last season when I wore the armband, but I knew that was a short-term thing. I knew Luke [O’Nien] would come back into the team, and Corry [Evans] towards the back end of the season.
“I just tried to enjoy the moment last season. This year, it’s a full-time thing, and I really enjoyed it today, walking the lads out for the first game of the season. I’m just glad we got off to a good start with a nice 2-0 win and a clean sheet.”