In a league where good chances come very rarely, to give 2 goals away like we did today is always going to spell disaster and todays game proved it. Those 2 mad minutes aside, it was a fairly even game, particularly the first half. In fact Sunderland probably had the better of the play and had more chances although admittedly they were half chances at best. The 2 goals changed it all though and it was game over once they went in.
2 changes from the Boro game, Nosworthy coming back in for Halford and Miller getting a well deserved start for Etuhu who’d raked up too many yellow cards.
As said, the first half was pretty even, and pretty dull. Both defences were on top and neither attack had the cutting edge to create anything meaningful. For Blackburn David Bentley was always a threat. He played just behind the front 2 and saw a lot of the ball but we dealt with him fairly well. Blackburn get a bad reputation for poor football and roughing teams up but they have a lot of good players. Tugay is a class act in the middle and Santa Cruz up front is very good. Even Gamst Pedersen, who has been superb the last 2 years had to settle for a place on the bench.
What chances were created fell mainly to Grant Leadbitter, he had a shot from 20 yards which never troubled Friedel much and after a cross and scramble in the box he had two goes at stabbing the ball home but both efforts were blocked. The other chance of the half came from a nice one-two between Miller and Chopra but Millers shot was too weak to cause any trouble. However just before the end of the half Chopra was through on goal, he tried to take the ball round Friedel, he went down and the ball went out. Despite furious claims of a penalty the referee somehow managed to give a convenient, middle of the road decision of a corner. I may be wrong but it didn’t look like Friedel got a hand to it to me and from Chopras reaction I don’t think he did either.
Second half and it was evident something special was needed to break the deadlock – either that or a stupid mistake. To be fair the first goal was a little unfortunate. Santa Cruz got the ball and ran in from the left, Nosworthy not wanting to lunge in with a tackle backed off him, he managed to get into the box, took a shot, that was deflected and the ball fell straight to an unmarked Bentley 10 yards out who scored easily.
It was a blow, but only one goal, plenty of time to get back int…whoops, 0-2. It was as quick as that. Higginbotham under hit a pass back, Emertons shot was parried by Gordon but it fell straight to Emerton again who calmly played in an unmarked Santa Cruz who doubled the lead. As quick as that the game was over. Yes, it was only 2 goals and last season I would have expected a heroic comeback and 3 points but Blackburn are too good for that.
For a short while after we seemed a little shell shocked and it wasn’t apparent how we were going to begin to get back into this. Keane made a triple substitution ending up with a proper front four but all this encouraged was long balls which never really looked like creating problems. Mcshane and Collins were playing basically as wingers and doing an ok job but it needed something special, something we couldn’t muster.
In the final minute, a knock down fell to Leadbitter who smashed in another great shot to setup another potential grandstand finish but it was too little too late, Blackburn managed to keep the ball for most of the four minutes of stoppage time and ran out time comfortably. Maybe if the goal came five minutes earlier who knows, maybe if we hadn’t made the mistakes earlier….
Keane pointed out earlier in the week that the team needs to learn and that comes from mistakes and defeats so this can be used to our advantage. Fingers will be pointed to a lack of quality in breaking Blackburn down but that would be a little harsh, Blackburn are a good, established Premier league side and up to the goals we matched them well but its very small margins which decide games and Blackburn took advantage of their opportunities well.
Man of the match – Liam Miller
Report by marcopaul
