Pure Poyetry SAFC 0 Chelsea 0: great team performance gains well earned point

Malcolm Dawson writes……He’s a hard taskmaster that M Salut! No sooner am I in the house, back from the Stadium of Light where we witnessed a well disciplined, well organised and hard working team performance, well deserving of at least one point from the Champions elect, when I open my e-mails to find his plea to share the manager’s post match thoughts. Well tonight, despite the fact I only have an hour to wait for MOTD thanks to the demands of a late televised kick off, and I’m dying for a brew it’s a pleasure to share Gus’s words. We had chances and there wasn’t a single player who didn’t put in a terrific performance. The boys have shown they can live with the best but this is Sunderland so we won’t get carried away. Wednesday is another tough home game but it’ll be the results against the teams destined to finish in the bottom half that will ultimately determine our final league position. But for now let’s see what Senor Poyet thinks.

Dear Colin,

I am very proud of today’s result; you can plan things and you can train, but the only real way to know if it works is by playing games against the best. It was the biggest challenge we have had so far this season, to stop Chelsea from scoring, and it’s a great reward for the players to have done so.

I am very pleased with what I saw today; it was a team effort and everyone worked well in their roles. I think the two players that came on – Jordi and Jozy – did very well and they helped us a lot to create chances; it was a perfect team effort. You cannot play any other way against Chelsea and you cannot be a team of individuals, so it was important everybody pulled together. On another day you might get more chances and have to defend less, but I think we need to realise who we were playing against, and today we played against the best team in the country, so like I said, it was a pleasure to stop them from scoring.

The supporters took us close to winning the game today. We had a few breaks and the stadium was rocking so the players got a little excited and were all pushing forward. That is what the Stadium of Light is all about; I think that makes us a very special team to play against, so let’s make sure we do it again on Wednesday against Manchester City.

Thanks for your support

Gus Poyet