After a disappointing first 45 minutes of our League One season – and let it be one season, for the right reason – goals from Josh Maja and, in the dying moments of the game, Lynden Gooch brought three massively encouraging points against Charlton Athletic.
Pete Sixsmith was not alone in representing the Salut! Sunderland editorial team at the Stadium of Light. Malcolm Dawson, deputy editor, and John McCormick, associate editor, too their places, too, among a remarkable 31,079 in the qround, leaving poor old Monsieur Salut – in London too briefly to be able to get up north for the game – to make do with Barnes and Benno after one local pub failed to stop the live coverage channel bouncing to Sky News and the other refused to show it.
When we went one down, to a penalty converted with absolute predictability by Lyle Taylor, who chose to join Charlton and not us in the close season, I feared the worst. But B&B saw lots of positives, Maja grabbed the equaliser as we appeared to improve greatly on a mostly poor first 45 minutes and, from what Benno described as an Oviedo cross of great quality, Gooch headed the winner.
Here, Sixer resumes his traditional seven-word summaries of each match he attends. He emphasises the important role played by the academy and in a second verdict, added ‘Top of the league; SAFC are top’. Rest assured he’ll have more to say later …
Aug 4 Sunderland (0) 2 Charlton Athletic (1) 1 A great day for club and academy
July 21 St Mirren (0) 0 Sunderland (2) 6 * Cracking results like this will suit fine
July 17 Grimsby Town (0) Sunderland (1) 1 *Gooch’s header from Maguire’s cross settles matters
July 14 Hartlepool United (1) 1 Sunderland (0) 1 Yet to see anything to inspire confidence
July 10 Darlington (1) 1 Sunderland (0) 0 Embarrassing defeat kicks off the new era
I watched it on Sky. I thought we were poor for the first 30 minutes, and Charlton could easily have scored a second.
We looked very nervous, and had difficulty in creating anything.
Completely different story after the break. I felt sure that if we scored, we would win. You could feel the relief flowing through the team when we scored.
Pity about the penalty. Poor challenge and an unnecessary one.
Promising start.
Didn’t think we were outplayed in the first half, though Charlton looked to have an attacking threat. Sinclair made a difference I thought as did Oviedo. Would like him to stay. Second half we certainly looked the better side. Perfect Boys Own script and black shorts.
Id agree…Oviedo seemed to make the difference for me.
Glad you enjoyed even the first half, Vince! As my introduction made clear, I was necessarily relying on what i heard and I heard little from Barnes & Benno and saw little on Twitter etc to suggest we were good until very late in that half
It was a nervy start ,but we seemed to settle down last 20 mins 1st half and had Charlton mostly on the back foot….signs were there we were gearing into a groove….the next goal, was critical, thankfully it went the right way.
Well at 1-0 down half time, I still thought we could win it. We really did put them under pressure last 20 mins first half and you knew if we scored we could win….no idea where this “disppointing first half comes from…must have been watching a different game to me.
Sorry Vince , I’ve got to disagree. The first half reeked of last season , nervy and disjointed. After the break it was as if Ross had reminded them that those days are gone and a brighter future awaits . We were like two different teams .