A brace from Ross Stewart helped Sunderland to an easy victory against the Alexandra Stadium last night with a Terell Thomas own goal and substitute Leon Dajaku scoring the other goals.
Manager David Artell made four changes from Saturday’s 3-0 defeat at Fleetwood Town with Will Jaaskelainen returning in goal with Kayne Ramsay, Donervon Daniels, Chris Long and Mika Mandron all coming into the team as Rio Adebisi, Chris Porter, Oli Finney and Scott Kashket all dropping down to the bench.
The opening chance of the game came in the 9th minute with Will Jaaskelainen making a great save from a corner headed goalwards before the Finnish number one would also deny Alex Pritchard 3 minutes later. Scott Robertson would have a shot saved by Ron-Thorben Hoffman in the visitors’ goal before the visitors took the lead in the 25th minute with Thomas slicing the ball into his own net from a cross from their left. They would double the lead 7 minutes later with Stewart scoring a diving header from Dan Neil’s cross.
Stewart would add his second 10 minutes after the break following a corner flicked on at the near post to the forward who was unmarked at the back post before Dajuka would come off the bench to score on the break for an Alex corner, smashing the ball in at the near post after running with the ball from inside his own half.
Our next couple of games see the Alex take a trip to Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday before hosting MK Dons the following Saturday.
What can we take out of this game?
I’m not sure how having an extra defender sees us so open at the back though I think that we should have had a third central midfielder rather than go with 3 forwards like we did. Artell really needs to decide on a formation that suits the squad best and just go with it for the next few weeks.