Goals in the final 10 minutes from substitutes Dan Neil and Patrick Roberts saw Sunderland condemn Crewe Alexandra to their 10th defeat in 11 games at the Stadium of Light yesterday.
Manager David Artell made three changes to the starting 11 from Tuesday’s 3-1 home defeat against Portsmouth with Zac Williams, Rekeem Harper and Callum Ainley all coming into the team with Luke Murphy and Chris Porter both dropping down to the bench while Dan Agyei would miss out due to injury.
The opening chance came in the 16th minute with Jermain Defoe unable to test Dave Richards before Chris Long would have an effort at the other end 15 minutes later with his effort wide of the target.
Long would have another effort that didn’t hit the target midway through the second half before Richards would deny Matete on 71 minutes but the hosts would make the break-through with 6 minutes to play. A through-ball found Ross Stewart with his layoff into the path of Neil to smash past Richards from the edge of the D before the second came with a minute left of normal time as Roberts and Jack Clarke would result in the former Manchester City attacker scoring from just inside the area.
Our next couple of games sees the Alex with 2 home games this week, first against Wigan Athletic on Tuesday before hosting Bolton Wanderers on Saturday.
What can we take out of this game?
In isolation, we saw a dogged performance at one of the biggest teams in the league but at some point we’re going to have to win games instead of settling for a point.
We saw the new management team during this match – Alex Morris has moved to the assistant manager role, Lee Bell taking his place as Under-23s manager while Kenny Lunt is now Player Development Manager.