Marked for Robert Mitchell
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad23 Feb 2043
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad23 Feb 2043
Chemsdine Talbi was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad23 Feb 2043
Habib Diarra falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Player ratings23 Feb 2043
Successful dribbles: 21. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings23 Feb 2043
A performance of 8.04 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad23 Feb 2043
The manager makes an example of Thomas Mitchell
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings23 Feb 2043
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 17 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Player ratings23 Feb 2043
13 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad25 Nov 2041
A knee injury of the worst kind for Charles Kelly
75 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sunderland lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad25 Nov 2041
There were 10 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Match23 Nov 2041
No end in sight to Sunderland's wait for a win
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Sunderland has to find a result from somewhere.
Player ratings25 Nov 2041
Age has not caught Mateus Mané yet — 7.90
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.90 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad25 Nov 2041
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad25 Nov 2041
Habib Diarra was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Match23 Nov 2041
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Sunderland and Derby County, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
Match23 Nov 2041
3‑3, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
Market25 Nov 2041
Mateus Mané linked with a move away
The name of Mateus Mané keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Sunderland say nothing, which says plenty.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad14 Oct 2041
A knee injury of the worst kind for Charles Kelly
117 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sunderland lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings14 Oct 2041
Mateus Mané, 34, rolls back the years — 8.23
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.23 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Squad14 Oct 2041
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sunderland this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match12 Oct 2041
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Sunderland have 3 straight wins of it.
Squad14 Oct 2041
Words at Sunderland training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dan Neil is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad14 Oct 2041
Robert Mitchell gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Robert Mitchell has just signed for Sunderland, and for once the answer mattered.
Boardroom14 Oct 2041
Burnley will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Ernesto Marqeshi has pre-agreed a move to Sunderland, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
Player ratings14 Oct 2041
Defensive actions: 16, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.