So do we see that as a point gained or two wasted? I guess it can be seen from two sides – one being that we should clearly be beating the so-called ‘struggling’ teams if we have designs on making it to 4th place any time in the next few seasons, especially one that lost 8-0 to Southampton a few weeks ago.
The other way of looking at it is that we are still clearly not playing too well (Lille last Thursday seems to have been a temporary ‘positive blip’ for some players), have players that are probably tired after playing in the Europa League, and that Sunderland have improved since their Soton defeat.
As normal the facts of the game are pretty simple – that Sunderland took the lead through a Larsson free-kick that Baines stupidly gave away and that Baines then made up for this by scuffing his penalty underneath Pantillimon to make it 1-1. And that’s how it ended.
5 other moments of note or thoughts though:
Lukaku – after playing particularly well against Lille last Thursday it seemed like he had finally turned a corner. He may not have scored but he had a very good game, holding the ball up well and being very strong and generally dangerous.
On Sunday against Sunderland he was rubbish. He couldn’t trap a bag of sand, his first touch was a goal kick and he generally couldn’t get into the game at all. I know he’s young. I know he has scored lots of goals for his age. Come on though – some of the build-up play that he ruins would be done so much better than Naismith, who was on the bench again (after being excellent against Lille too). We need more Romelu. Starting with West Ham in a couple of weeks.
Gareth Barry – let’s just hope he’s okay shall we? It could have been worse as originally everyone thought he’d broken his leg, but he’ll still be out for a while. On Sunday, Martinez replaced him with Darron Gibson and whilst he did okay at times he clearly hasn’t got the defensive mindset or skills of Barry. Barry also knows his own limits as opposed to Gibson, who still insists on having pot-shots from distance because ‘one went in one time’. Hurry back, Gary!
Tim Howard – stop messing about mate. Lying on the ball outside the area isn’t big nor clever. We need someone who isn’t going to clown around at the moment if that’s okay?
Barkley – oh dear. Now, it may have been because Martinez stuck him out on the left but he really didn’t play well again. He seems to be getting frustrated quickly in recent games as he struggles to get a grip on games. His new trick seems to be to try and do too much and have the odd shot into the crowd from 30 yeards before he launches into a bad tackle and has to be replaced for his own good. Reminds me a bit of Rooney actually in his final season for us. Hopefully he will be given time to firstly get back in the middle of the park and then have the chance to influence the game with a bit more intelligence.
Distin – now I gave him some stick on here after Distin (now our 4th choice centre-back remember) seemed to fall out with Martinez and sign his own death warrant, but he actually played really well alongside Jagielka. Felt at times that he was back to his best from last season. More of this please (mainly as we need him to be at his best until Stones gets back!).
So what is next? Well the first thing we’d like to see happen is for all our players to come back from the Euro qualifiers/friendlies safely. McCarthy needs to stay at home and rest up (sorry Rep of Ireland fans), whilst seeing Baines and Jagielka rested for the pointless and potentially-fraught game v Scotland a week Tuesday would be great.
Our next game is at home against a confident and in-form West Ham. We normally beat them fairly easily, and doing so again would put us one point behind them. This is turning into a must-win game already!!