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Just watched documentary on Netflix about Sunderland's relegation last season from the Championship. I found it quite fascinating, but one of the biggest things that striked me, which shone through was the fragile confidence of professional footballers, even experienced ones, and the negative...

In his first few games Sterling didn't look to get involved, passed the ball on as soon as he received it, and made a few basic defensive errors. Now he is a completely different player, he is defensively sound and confident in possession, looking for the ball and holding onto it when needed...

Of course it shouldn't be relevant in an ideal world but for League 1 team we have our share of short arses in the team, and although our central defenders are as good as any in this league, not playing JCH does leave us very vulnerable at set pieces against the bigger teams in the league. MR...

His pace always offers us an outlet, and I suspect he is the player whose absence will impact us the most. I presume he will have to miss the next 2 games, so it might present an opportunity for Allessani I guess, although I'm not convinced MR believes he is ready yet.

Surprises me Bayliss is getting such criticism - I thought he did ok today. He's a similar player to Baker was in that he doesn't take the safe obvious option, and as such is prone to making some mistakes. On the flip side though, he creates more openings for the team. I accept his end product...

You mentioned them in the same post so of course you were comparing them. The fans who were against Wise coming were wrong, but the one's reacting against Ireland are not. End of story.

It is nearly 10 years since Ireland was a decent player. He has done nothing since then. The comparison to Wise is ludicrous. Wise was a leader on the pitch who always gave his all & played consistently well at the top level for 15-20 years. Wise and even Doyle are exceptions, as most older...

Looks like JCH to me, who to be fair is usually fairly good defensively.

Burge - 6 Sterling - 7 Willis - 6 Hyam - 6 Brown - 5 Thomas - 6 Kelly - 6 Ogogo - 4 Bayliss - 4 JCH - 4 Chaplin - 4 Hiwula - 5 Brown loses a point for the petty unneccesary foul for the free kick they scored from - he always seems prone to that stupid kind of foul. Kelly played well enough...

Yes opposite wing to Thomas - I guess Bayliss would be more comfortable on the right.

Now Kelly has got a couple of games under his belt I think we have to go with the Doyle, Kelly & Bayliss combination in midfield that finished last season so well. Not sure they have started a game together yet this season.

Burge has been good this season but the mistake was a real howler. He had already made to bad decisions before that about coming off his line when he misread the flight of the ball which he got away with, so he should really have learnt from them and stayed on his line.

Let's hope Kelly really steps up & shows we can perform without Doyle.

Quietly confident?

Wasn't Darius Henderson an old head? That worked well!

Loved watching him play for us and was gutted when we sold him so soon after signing him. Of course we then went and got relegated too. One thing on the lack of celebration thing though - check out his celebration when he scored the winner for Leeds against us - the full somersault etc, so...

I remembered the 2nd coming from an awful pass from Brown that lost us possession, but to compound that I hadn't quite realised just how pathetic he was in giving up on chasing the goal scorer once he got the ball.

Surprised Brown is being marked so well. Yes he got forward a bit but he got caught out of position frequently. Don't know where he was for their first goal but it came from his side, and if I remember right their 2nd goal came from an extremely casual pass from him to lose us possession, from...

I think Stockley is a decent shout and could be a better fit with Chaplin than JCH. Hopefully we keep Thomas to the end of the season. I think Doyle is unlikely to be replaced until the end of the season, but a player I would look at to replace him either way would be Sam Finley at Accrington...

Stuart Pearce's debut was pretty impressive. If I remember right Bobby Gould pretty much put him straight in the team having signed him from non league Wealdstone. Anyhow we played QPR and I can still remember the gasp from the crowd when he made first tackle on the unfortunate QPR winger...