Sunderland has plenty of players with experience of relative EPL success. For me, there is far more wrong with the decisions made by this team than there is with the player ability available.
And someone critcized subbing scocco for ki. makes sense. They are already playing 3 at the back with two wing backs i think. You rarely go two at the back. So he subs a holding mid off for a striker. Not a good one but it was still a striker. And you can criticize not playing altidore but at this point poyet's tried every player and they typical subs he's used all year have never worked so i'm guessing he's looking for something new, anything new, anything but the same old subs.
experience isn't quality. they don't have quality. And other than Johnson that midfield isn't full of guys with lots of success elsewhere and even johnson was a player that failed at big club. Ki is a cast off from a midtable team in swansea. I don't see anything wrong with a manager that's trying something new when the old way hasn't worked all season. Not to mention they rightly deserved a penalty on that handball and were screwed. Now Johnson would never be on the bench in my team so i don't get that but other than that I don't really have big problems with Poyet's moves. They all make tactical sense. In fact i've been calling for Altidore to play with a partner. for the last two games he's played two up top which i've wanted. Too bad Altdore isn't one of them. But i can't criticize him now that he's done what i thought needed to be done.
Wickham's final stats: 3 shots, 1 on target, 26/33 passes completed including 1 key pass, 2 dispossessions, 1 foul drawn. 1 interception, 2 fouls committed, 1 yellow card. WSRating: 6.36
I was complaining about subbing off Ki, who is actually a somewhat decent player and has the ability to play a killer pass, instead of subbing off Bridcutt who has shown absolutely no offensive prowess and has a tendency to play balls straight out of bounds at the times when Sunderland is pressing.
Well if you take off Bridcut and leave ki, you have basically have no defender in the midfielder. If you take off for a Ki you get an attacker farther up the pitch and keep a defender to sit deep. Ki is better yes and yes more likely to play a killer pass but with, but if he left Ki in he's the deepest mid and then he would be asking him to play more as a defensive midfielder which personally i think he's mediocre at. That's why Bridcut stays. That being said i think Bridcutt has been poor for a few games now.
Ki is perfectly capable of dropping deep to lead them forward. He does this plenty enough as is. They had to have a goal. Right then. Think about it. When in their top flight careers have you ever seen worse performance from Gia? Bardsley? Larsson? Fletcher? Even Ki and Johnson? Hell, throw in Altidore. The guys has a home game they simply need to win and he decided the necessary idea was to bench Johnson and give tons more attack responsibility to Alonso, Bardsley and Wickham. Cuckoogonuts.
It is looking more and more like that initial uptick in Sunderland's play after giving Di Canio the boot may have just been an andrenaline rush from having a new start. Do they still look loads better under Poyet now?
So, did they find some way to blame Jozy for the home debacle? Clearly he wasn't setting right in the seats, or not cheering loudly enough. He wasn't making the proper runs to the water fountain to open space for the ball boys to deliver the balls for the throw ins.