Malcolm Dawson writes….Keir Bradwell isn’t old enough to remember many of the players that Salut! Sunderland regulars refer to when drawing comparisons with the current squad. Born in the post Roker era he is even too young to remember Quinn and Phillips in their pomp, Mickey Gray or Chris Makin, Allan Johnston and Nicky Summerbee, Kevin Ball and Alex Rae. What we old gits would give to see their like now! Unfettered by the memories Keir gives the current squad his ratings for their performance against West Ham. Out of ten that is!
Sunderland 1 – 2 West Ham – Player Ratings
My disappointment immune system broke down.
Vito Mannone: 7
Did well. Made some excellent saves and went up for the corners, which was fun. Still have a lot of faith in him.
Phil Bardsley: 5
To be fair to him, he was playing right-wing for a lot of the game, but even so, more end product is certainly required. Put in a lot of effort, as usual, but failed to do anything with it, at all.
John O’Shea: 2
A really poor game in which he completely lost Carroll for their opener, and then wasted time & possession over and over again. Really think he needs a rest.
Santiago Vergini: 5
Massively better than against Liverpool, but that’s not saying much. Did reasonably well, didn’t really shine. Perhaps could’ve stopped their second.
Wes Brown: 6
Did rather well. Not much of note to say on him, really. Did as a centre-back should.
Marcos Alonso: 4
Massive let-down, still not as bad as most.
Liam Bridcutt: 1
Woefully, woefully poor. Waylaid passes non-stop, failed to impose himself on the opposition and broke up our own play with his lack of pace and accuracy. Abysmal performance.
Lee Cattermole: 2
The more I think about the chance he squandered in the first half, the more I think two things. The first is that he will never, ever, score a goal. It’s just not meant to be. The second is that he is completely useless in front of goal and he really, really should’ve scored. Massively disappointing game that was summed up by that miss.
Ki Sung-Yueng: 3
Better than his other midfielders, but still failed to produce anything much and was not his usual self, as he, like Bridcutt but to a lesser extent, wasted some of our chances to attack by being too slow and too sloppy.
Fabio Borini: 3
Put in massive amounts of effort, but, like Bardsley, failed to do anything with the chances he had. We’ve seen much better games from Borini.
Connor Wickham: 4
Did fairly poorly, but shows signs of improving. Still massively better than Jozy Altidore, so deserves to start next week.
Adam Johnson: 8
Scored a goal, and gave us courage in attack. Fantastic performance that proves that he must start as many games as possible until the end of the season, to give us at least a fighting chance of surviving. Was the only attacking player on the pitch by the end who wasn’t wasteful and had intent to do something productive. Man of the Match.
Craig Gardner: 6
Did surprisingly well, actually. Not brilliantly, but was solid and a threat, unlike the rest of the midfield.
Nacho Scocco: 2
Had a free header, which he put miles over. Yet another frustrating performance.
Keir said ” I can’t remember him,”
My apologies Keir. At least your are fortunate in that regard.
Poor old Jeff Whitley. What did he do to upset you? – absolutely nothing! 🙂
What, as in, he did absolutely nothing on the pitch?
Like Altidore? 😉
Correct!
Keir might not be old enough to remember Super Kev and Quinny, and that’s a shame. At least he’s also too young to remember Jeff Whitley.
They were both totally before my time. Whitley wasn’t, he scored one of his two goals on my first game, against West Ham in, I think, 2003. I can’t remember him, but I’ve seen him play.
Don’t think Bridcutt was that bad, but he’s a one trick pony .I wish he’d cut that pointing out , gets right on my wick and I bet he’s team mates don’t appreciate it much either .
I think it’s job he’s been given. When he’s not playing Cattermole does it.
I just thought that the amount of times he broke up our own play was ridiculous.
Wow! You’re as hard on your team as we are with ours!
I don’t think you did such a bad job. However, not playing Johnson from the start was a huge mistake!
You have a good team and I hope you stay up… there are worse teams out there that deserve the drop.
Cheers!
Ah yes but at least West Ham might stay up!
I agree r.e. Johnson, he was fantastic when he came on.
Aha thanks! 🙂