While it’s probably unfair to label Keane as a tinkerman or anything as similarly clichéd, he’s yet to field an unchanged side as Sunderland manager. There’s been many good reasons for this of course, him being new to the job, finding out about players, injuries, suspensions etc have forced his hand. He does however, seem to give credit to players who have impressed in training that week and reward them with a place in the starting line up. Today he dispensed with the fairly successful 4-5-1 setup and reverted back to 2 up front with David Connolly coming back in at the expense of Leadbitter in midfield. Varga took Nyatangas place in the side with Collins moving to left back and we had a first sight of Marton Fulop with Ward missing out due to illness.
The change seemed to suit us quite well actually with the game starting quite brightly. It also suited Luton however as within 4 minutes we were one down. A break caught us short at the back a bit, Collins tried to fill in a centre half but left the ring winger free, he crossed, Caldwell got a leg to it but it fell kindly straight to Morgan who smashed it home. A pretty poor goal to concede but a good time to concede if you’re going to.
We got straight back into it and 5 minutes later Murphy scored a fine goal to level. Taking the ball down the left, he cut inside, ran into the box and hammered it into the top corner of the goal. A superb run and finish from someone who’s starting to show his potential on a more regular basis.
The rest of the first half remained fairly open and was far more entertaining than most of the games recently at home. We had good movement and a quicker tempo to our play which helped. Luton however also had good chances and probably the best of them when Vine got behind the defence but he put a one on one with the keeper wide.
Second half and I had little doubt that we’d win. We created too many chances in the first half not to have good chances to score in the second. It didn’t take us long to take the lead, Connolly got the ball in the box from the right, with a defender tight against him, moved to his left and finished to make it 2-1. A good finish and a typical Connolly goal.
For the next five minutes we could have buried them, Connolly had a header superbly tipped over and Wallace put a far post header over the bar that he should have done better with. However as is the Sunderland way we make it difficult for ourselves. We tended to sit back a little on the lead and as Luton came forward more for the winner we saw ourselves camped in our own half at times. While Fulop didn’t have to pull off great saves, it was decent pressure and there were a few near misses.
We never seem to be able to get that 2 goal cushion to see a game out more comfortably but these narrow wins must be doing some good to the confidence that they can do it (something we failed miserably with that year) and is restoring this ‘winning habit’ back into the team.
With 2 away games coming up to take us into the Christmas period we could come out of this lot of games very well off, but there’s some tough games coming up. The comforting thing about this league is if we lose any we’ll still be well in touch, the leagues is so close, but to extend the run were on would see is back amongst the sides at the top – the very top.
Man of the match – Daryl Murphy
Report by marcopaul