Our youngest columnist by some margin, Keir Bradwell, 14 at the end of this month, quickly follows Pete Sixsmith back into action with the return of his man-by-man SAFC player ratings. You are at liberty to disagree …
Player ratings are like bottles of wine: the longer it takes to make them, the nicer they are. Apparently.
Mannone – 6
Quietly impressive, although looked a bit shaky at times.
Vergini – 5
Seemed a bit off the pace, and he’s never going to be the attacking full-back we’d like behind Johnson. He’s still our best right-back at the club, but his offensive limitations were exposed today.
Brown – 6
A fairly subdued performance from Brown, who never really shone in the heart of the defence.
O’Shea – 6
Had one or two decent moments, but, like Brown, had a quiet game.
van Aanholt – 5
His delivery was poor and he’s still not very solid at the back, but offers enough pace and work rate to justify his place in the team. Not his finest game in red and white, even so.
Cattermole – 9
Stole the show. Time and time again, Catts came to the rescue with some fantastic challenges and then passes up field. I’ve seen some people claim he wasn’t at his best, but to me, at least, he was brilliant. (I thought he was off the pace—Ed)
Larsson – 7
The effort Larsson puts in is incredible. He ran and ran and ran up and down the field all day, moving the ball up the pitch in a way that the rest of the midfield doesn’t seem to want to, by keeping it to himself, rather than passing it around, which seems to take an age when you need a goal.
Rodwell – 5
Maybe he’s still not fit. Maybe he needs to adjust to playing more often. I don’t know. But again, this week, Rodwell has seemed off the pace. It’s hard to be too critical but he’s really not having the impact I’d hoped of, so far. I still think he’ll do very well, in time.
Alvarez – 5
I didn’t expect wonders from Alvarez on his debut, and it was clear to see he needs to settle in England and adapt to the physical nature of the league, and that’s to be expected. Like Rodwell, I still have very high hopes that he’ll do well, once he’s up to speed.
Wickham – 7
It’s amazing to see how far he’s come since joining the club. His strength is a huge asset up top, and while he didn’t score this week, you can’t imagine goals will be far away.
Johnson – 8
Scored an outstanding goal at a time when we were in danger of being overrun at 1-0 down after a minute. His best performance this season, quite comfortably.
Giaccherini – 7
Still slightly confused about why he isn’t in the team. Brilliant—yet again—from the bench.
Buckley – 6
Good when he came on, apart from that miss (can you imagine if Altidore had done that?)
Gomez – 6
Did well.
My problem with Mannone is that he does a half job some of the time. His parry for their opening goal was obviously successful in blocking the initial shot but pushed the ball straight back to a Spurs player. A better keeper would have got the ball further to their own right and out of danger.
LIkewise in the second half there was a ball he came out for with his feet when he could equally have gone for it with his hands, and which would have been far more effective than his chosen option.
As for Catternole, Keir I think I must have been watching a different game to the one you saw as the game was passing him by for long spells. He’s been in good form recently but this was a very moderate performance from him IMHO.
I tend to agree with the rest of your comments. As for Vergini, he looked very stretched and out of position a lot defensively against Spurs. Poor from him.
Giacchi should be starting.
Lots of people go on about Mannone only parrying that shot and not getting it far enough away – it was a split second reflex reaction he had no time to do anything more than get something in the way of the ball – which he did brilliantly. As for “pushing it straight back to a Spurs player” after the initial save it is then up to the defence to make sure that one of them gets to the ball before an attacker.
I’m with Kier on Cattermole – streets ahead of any other Sunderland player on the pitch.
Agree with you about Larsson, apart from the goal Johnson was his usual pedestrian, ineffective self. This was a very good Spurs team who will be there or thereabouts come May. We couldn’t have had any complaints if we had lost by four or five goals, that we didn’t is down to one man – Mannone – he was far and away the man of the match.