Poyetry in Motion from Cardiff: never say die attitude brings reward

There was turmoil off the pitch at Cardiff where the owner began with a smile on his face, no doubt convinced that he could convince the home support that he knows best. No sign of turmoil on the pitch, where the red Bluebirds started brightly and had Gus Poyet’s men on the backfoot. Unlike at Goodison the centre back pairing of Roberge and Diakite were looking decidedly shaky and some slack marking gave the Welsh side a two goal lead. An enforced substitution at half time (the latest is Borini is out of hospital but staying in Cardiff overnight) and two others later in the game proved decisive. With the Black Cats gaining the upper hand in the latter stages it was two of the subs who got the goals that took a point back to Wearside and left Mr Tan apparently booing his own team. Our Uruguayan coach is effusive in his praise of the team’s battling qualities in his post-match e-mail …

Dear Colin,

We have a great group of players, they won’t accept defeat – to beat us you’re going to have to fight very very hard; we’re not giving up. The only negative is that we didn’t start well, but that’s football, you can’t always be at your best. After half an hour we improved and started creating chances and it gave me hope for the second half.

Then we went down to 2-0 after some poor defending, but the players showed great spirit to come back – it was unbelievable, Cardiff couldn’t leave their own half. We were attacking well, lots of shots and crosses, everything was one way. It showed we were not willing to accept defeat and then the breakthrough came. After the final whistle the players came in the dressing room saying they wished they could have played for another three or four minutes as they felt that we could have went on and won the game.

City scored their first goal through a deflection and we got the same luck right at the end – Jack [Colback] can’t remember the last time he scored, he did well today coming on off the bench after returning from illness earlier in the week.

It’s a great result for the fans, they can now make that long journey back to Sunderland proud of their team and with a feeling that we did something important today. They can be 100% sure that to beat us a team has to do something special.

All the best,

Gus Poyet

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