SA’s Essay: decent Sunderland performance not enough against Arsenal

Malcolm Dawson writes….on the day that Storm Desmond hit the North East of England, those who braved the long journey down to North London were rewarded with a decent performance but with no end result. At least that’s how the manager sees it in the customary post match e-mail.

ARSENAL 3 SUNDERLAND 1

Dear Colin,

We didn’t get in front like we should have done; when you create an opportunity against Arsenal you need to take it.

We missed a very good chance inside the first 15 minutes and when those appear you need to grab them. We managed to pull back to 1-1 after going behind and I thought that was deserved. At that point we should have capitalised and took the lead. I thought we played well but we just didn’t take our chances and to come away having lost 3-1 after creating those chances is disappointing.

Today was one of those days, on any other day we would have scored. Hopefully we can continue to play the way we played today in creating so many opportunities and score goals and ultimately win games.

It was a good performance. I can’t knock the players for their efforts. It’s the best performance I’ve seen since I’ve been at the club. The players are improving, each week they’re performing better and better, it’s just unfortunate that it didn’t get us a result today as I thought we deserved to.

We had players like Lee Cattermole, Jermain Defoe and Seb Larsson missing due to injury and I was encouraged by the players who stepped in for them.

I am disappointed with the result, but in terms of performance I’m satisfied with how the team played against Arsenal, who are a side that always provide a tough test.

Thanks for your support,

Sam Allardyce