Martin’s Musings from Blackburn: from high intensity to weary underachievement

Jake imagines the snailmail version

Martin O’Neill could have said we were unlucky, he could have said we were tired after Goodison without making adding the obvious qualification that this is not really an excuse. He did not; the post-match e-mail – and sorry, Martin, there was no appetite to wait up for it last night – accepts we were beaten because we played, for the most part, badly …


Don't blame Jake!


Dear Colin,

It was very disappointing – we should have been able to do better.

We didn’t start well enough in the game and then after they scored the goal we had perhaps our best spell of the game.

We put pressure on them and started to pass the ball, which we hadn’t done in the first half – I can’t remember a time where we strung four passes together.

I accept that the game against Everton on Saturday was of high intensity and a bit draining and maybe one or two of the players were a bit tired.

That said, we should still be ready for the games and we’ve got to be right.

Click here for the Martin O’Neill ‘Team of all Talents’ mug: £9.50, post-free for UK buyers, from the Salut! Sunderland Shop

We missed a great opportunity to equalise when the ball fell to young Ji [Dong-won] but we should have been able to create more throughout the game.

Blackburn battled well and got their goal at a good moment; the game was very much in the balance at that stage.

If we had played better throughout then you might have thought we had been a bit unlucky but the ball fell to them in the penalty area and we didn’t do enough to clear it.

The overall performance wasn’t strong enough.

Now we have to take the defeat and try and get it out of our system.

All the best,


Martin O’Neill



Join the Salut! Sunderland Facebook group – click anywhere along this line



And follow us on Twitter: @salutsunderland … click along this line

Click anywhere on this sentence for a glance at the home page – and highlights of all the most recent articles …

4 thoughts on “Martin’s Musings from Blackburn: from high intensity to weary underachievement”

  1. You can’t have a go at McClean for putting crosses into the box to find that neither striker is there. Campbell who was awful last night as as guilty as Bendtner for this.

    There are a lot of people who seem to think that Bendtner had a good game. He did a lot of “good work” as some would see it on the half way line but is never at the sharp end. He doesn’t stick his head where it hurts and for a bloke 6′ 4″ he doesn’t bully defenders either. Bendtner is far too deep and far too wide nearly all of the time. Someone older than me might be able to recall the last time he actually ran full tilt after a ball. I can’t. He makes me wish we had Billy Whitehurst back.

  2. Terrible, terrible game between 2 sides playing really badly. I do worry about us when we go behind as the team is set up so much for the counter attack but even so we should have been level before they got their second and the game would have been different. Red Frog is a bit harsh on McClean who set up 2 sitters for Bendtner, who was on his heels and did slide in as aggressively as the full back, and for Ji about which least said the better but I hope one of our coaches is doing some intensive work on schoolboy basics (head over the ball, it stays down). I also think that red frog is a little kind to Mignolet who has been very good recently and made another very good save last night, but was undoubtedly to blame for the key first goal with a weak flap under little pressure. Hopefully Campbell and Larsson will have their own boots on for Saturday and will be back to the form they have shown most of the season.

  3. Sorry! But when did Steve Bruce and/or Terry Butcher return to the club? Not since Brighton and Hove game (Game? Ha!) have I seen such a poor performance. I dont mind spending hard earned money for my team to lose, On the proviso they actually contribute to the 90 minutes. We could have played Mignolet and Bardsley only and still produced that result. Lets hope for better at the weekend.

Comments are closed.

Next Post