Steve Bruce: riding our luck against Newcastle

Joan Dawson is doing such a grand job as acting editor that it seems almost wrong to intrude, and Steve Bruce‘s post-match comments hardly match Pete Sixsmith’s for wit and incisiveness (see this report). But here, nonetheless, are Steve’ s thoughts – which found their way to M Salut in Malaysia – on a game in which Newcastle started much the sharper, coped with our lively response and went on to dominate. No dispute at Salut! Sunderland on who merited three points …

Dear Colin,

When you’re behind in a derby game and score 30 seconds from the end then of course you are pleased.

To rescue it was very pleasing as we didn’t play at all well in the second half. Newcastle started brightly but for the half an hour leading up to half time I thought we were in the ascendancy.

Second half we just didn’t play and got caught up in the whole occasion again. We didn’t take the ball down and play as we normally do.

We can’t resort to just hitting it forward as quickly as we possibly can because we’re not that sort of team. However, we’ll take the draw, we’ll take a point.

The late goal was great for the fans, but for me it keeps us five points above them and ticking along with the big part of the season still to come.

You need a bit of luck in a derby game, it was our turn in the last minute. It was a great strike from Phil and it’s hit Asamoah on the chest – that was probably his best touch of the afternoon!

Newcastle were a handful and they’re a big, strong physical team. We struggled against that, I have to be honest, but today we’ve managed to get out of it.

We need to play the football we know we can. Today we got drawn into hitting the ball forward early which we haven’t done all season.

All the best,

Steve Bruce

Monsieur Salut