Sunderland hero says ‘let’s be honest’ as he blasts Coventry performance..
Sunderland have the upper hand in the Championship play-off semi-final but not everyone was impressed by their win at Coventry City..
Sunderland fans’ favourite Julio Arca was not going to let the result pull the wool over his eyes about his old team’s performance in the Championship play-off semi-final first leg at Coventry City.
The 44-year-old sounded like he had watched much of the game looking through his fingers before second-half goals from Wilson Isidor and Eliezer Mayenda, either side of a goal from Jack Rudoni, gave the Black Cats a 2-1 victory.
It was a relief for Sunderland, who had gone into the game on the back of five straight defeats to end the regular season, but all is still to play for when they meet again next Tuesday.
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“Fantastic result for Sunderland tonight,” Arca wrote on social media, via the Sunderland Echo. “But let’s be honest, another bad performance in my opinion. No patterns of play, possession was bad, the team gave the ball away all the time, and could not keep the ball for longer than 5 seconds. Set pieces not great either.
“Positives, I liked the formation 4-4-2, great to see two strikers again up front. Defensively, I think the team done well,” Arca continued. “Players that done well for me tonight: Dan Ballard and Eliezer Mayenda. Let’s hope we see a better performance on Tuesday, but fantastic win.”
Sunderland manager Regis le Bris was modest in his post-match assessment, admitting that he had to make changes to help left-back Dennis Cirkin against Milan van Ewijk and Tatsu Sakamoto.
He said: “The first half was a little bit complicated because we struggled to manage our left side and they were really good on that side, they overloaded that part of the pitch and we fixed that problem during half-time.
“The second half was a bit better because we regained different balls and we felt it was possible to recover the ball in the middle with our threats. We knew with our two forwards probably we could have less control in the middle but more threats in behind and it was possible to exploit during the second half.
“It’s just half-time. I think we showed today that we were in our plan. We were fresh, we were connected and had all of our players available. We knew it’d be tough because Coventry are good and the second leg will be tight.”
Sunderland manager Regis le Bris was modest in his post-match assessment, admitting that he had to make changes to help left-back Dennis Cirkin against Milan van Ewijk and Tatsu Sakamoto.
He said: “The first half was a little bit complicated because we struggled to manage our left side and they were really good on that side, they overloaded that part of the pitch and we fixed that problem during half-time.
“The second half was a bit better because we regained different balls and we felt it was possible to recover the ball in the middle with our threats. We knew with our two forwards probably we could have less control in the middle but more threats in behind and it was possible to exploit during the second half.
“It’s just half-time. I think we showed today that we were in our plan. We were fresh, we were connected and had all of our players available. We knew it’d be tough because Coventry are good and the second leg will be tight.”
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