Same old story, different result. The final tally in this match should have been much, much worse as our finishing looked a lot like it did last year, horrid. If we play this away against a decent squad at their place, forget it. We'd be lucky to get away with a scoreless draw.
Torres, even though he put in a man of the match performance, should have at least had one goal if not two, and I would really like to know what Voronin was thinking near the end when he had a two-on-one with Torres and a Sunderland defender and he tried to pass it to El Nino through the defender. I'm all for being unselfish, but that was just stupid. He should have held the ball and took the shot himself.
I don't have much more to add to that, I'm going to have to watch it again before I make any more observations. It was good to get the win away from home this early in the season, but even with Keano at the helm, Sunderland looks like a side headed back to the Championship. It's tough to tell if this was a good win or not.
What is not good is that Carra and Babel both looked as if they left the field with minor injuries. Carra appeared to have hurt his rib cage and Babel was grimacing as he limped off late.
Another positive we should take from this game is that our defenders were able to stay back and not expend unnecessary energy on attack. I hope we begin to do that more often, not only because it reserves the energy of our already thin backline, but it also allows more space for our attacking players. The more space they seemed to have, the more creative they were, especially Pennant and Babel.
I don't know if I can pick a Man of the Match at this point, but it's probably between Momo, Torres, and Voronin. I'll have to watch the match again to make a final decision. Until then, have a great day.