After Southend, the supporters had decided wich players weren't showing the heart required to turn the situation around. Despite scoring at Roots Hall, Jon Stead was joined on the fans' hit list by Liam Lawrence, Danny Collins and Rory Delap. Ben Alnwick was being excused, mostly because local players traditionally get an easier ride from Sunderland fans – in the past forwards like Craig Russell and Michael Proctor were lauded as being far better players than they ever were, mostly due to their place of birth. In truth, Alnwick's positioning and kicking had been continually poor, and although he'd just signed a new four year contract, he would need to show significant improvement if he wanted to hold on to the keeper's shirt at the club.
There was to be no improvement whatsoever at Bury in the Coca-Cola Cup three days later. Many of the fans making their way to the ground would have been heartened by memories of their last trip to Gigg Lane in 1999, when Sunderland won 5-2 to clinch promotion to the Premiership, a certain Kevin Phillips scoring four of those goals. Fast forward to 2006 and, just before kick-off, the surprising news broke that Phillips had opted to stay in the Midlands and sign for West Bromwich Albion. Officially, he later said that he had been unwilling to uproot his young family and return to the North-East for a second spell, although a quick look at the league table can't have made the decision any tougher for him.
Amazingly, out of a crowd of 2,390 at Gigg Lane, around 1,200 were Sunderland supporters. Many of them were probably still finding their seats as Arnau was sent off in the third minute for the use of an elbow. A story later circulated that Niall Quinn had asked for the away dressing room to be locked after the players headed out on to the pitch. When the Bury official returned with the key, one player had been left behind in full kit. "I been sent off" he mumbled in broken English.
So, right from the off, the Wearsiders were up against it again. Although Bury were anchored to the bottom of League Two, this was potentially a major scalp for them and the red card gave them a platform to build upon. Sunderland meanwhile, were showing admirable consistency – yet again they huffed and puffed around the field but were toothless up front. Daryl Murphy looked a long way from adding to the two goals he'd scored earlier in the month, while Stephen Elliott was still desperately scrabbling for some kind of form and looking a pale shadow of the player who had scored for fun in the Championship two years previously.
The game dragged on, devoid of any real quality from either side, until Sunderland's fatigue from being a man short finally started to tell, Bury taking the lead in the 83rd minute with a free header from defender John Fitzgerald. He celebrated by leaping into the crowd and as he'd already been booked, it was to be his last act of the evening. A second yellow card was duly whipped out by the referee and Fitzgerald followed Arnau down the tunnel.
The levelling of numbers came too late for Sunderland to get anything from the game and a Bury hammered another nail in the coffin with three minutes to go. The Sunderland defence seemed to think the game had ended when Andy Bishop raced through and lifted the ball past Alnwick to wrap the result up.
Afterwards, Niall Quinn faced the media, visibly distraught by the result and another performance that was so far away from an acceptable level as to be scarcely believable. The optimism and hope that surrounded the takeover by Quinn and his Drumaville consortium had led to one of Sunderland's worst starts in living memory. The manager who'd never wanted the job was quitting. A world class boss was on his way.
No comments:
Post a Comment