Sam Allarydce on Wednesday conserved his record of never managing a team to relegation. He was appointed as Sunderland’s manager in October of 2015 when relegation clouds were looming large, he managed to sail Sunderland through and in doing that he extracted some sweet revenge by pushing the local rivals and his former club Newcastle who has sacked him into relegation.
Sunderland as their previous manager had said were doomed for relegation but “Big Sam” used this as a challenge and turned the odds by securing a place in the Premier League with a game in hand.
Before kickoff Aston Villa had already been relegated and what Norwich City and Newcastle needed was Sunderland to lose as that would put them just once point away from avoiding relegation with a game in and but as Sunderland ensured not to leave anything to chance they defeated Roberto Martinez’s Everton in a convincing manner 3-0, ended up actually bossing them after they had been beaten 6-2 by the same side in November.
The Build Up
Sunderland had the momentum coming into the match as they had made a comeback against Chelsea, adding more insult to the already woeful season of last year champions.
Everton on other hand were in a bit of a fix, a team which had invested heavily over the seasons with the hopes of competing with the top teams had managed to win seven of their last 30 fixtures and six of these wins have come against lower oppositions This loss has only added a question mark on Roberto Martinez’s future as the manager with rumor doing rounds of Frank de Boer tipped for Everton arrival after quitting Ajax.
The Match
Everton started the match well and trying to calm the nerves and trying to remain organized to learn from their past mistakes but some poor keeping by Robles gave Sunderland the opener in the 38th minute. Van Aanholt hit a fairly tame low free kick to the left of the wall, Robles jumps behind the wall, and lets the ball nestle into the left-hand side of the net. And things got bad for Everton within 5 minutes as Sunderland fired home a second from close range courtesy of Kone.
The Stadium of Light went wild into jubilation as the Black cats were just 45 minutes away from survival and that too at the expense of Newcastle.
In the second half Sunderland played with most men behind the ball with Defoe as the only target point up front and this also almost paid off as a chip from Defoe beat the Everton keeper only to be cleared off the line. Everton possession football did not do them any good. And in what turned out to be one of the worst days for Everton keeper, another mistake on his part resulted in the third goal of the match. His poor clearance of the ball gave Kone the opportunity to fire a third, his second in the match to make it game set and match for the Black cats.
Parting Comments
Come next season Sunderland can possibly take a leaf out of Leicester City’s book and emulate them who knows. As for Everton some serious introspection is needed as to how it can go so wrong in the End.