The Sunderland Chronicle
Match16 Aug 2042
No end in sight to Sunderland's wait for a win
17 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Sunderland has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad18 Aug 2042
A knee injury of the worst kind for Romaine Mundle
53 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.
Squad18 Aug 2042
Chemsdine Talbi breaks a bone — 45 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 45 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad18 Aug 2042
David Ilsanker keeps Sunderland in it on his own
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad18 Aug 2042
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 ratings18 Aug 2042
Nothing got past Liam Smith
22 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.
Boardroom18 Aug 2042
12 academy players handed senior numbers at Sunderland
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Player ratings18 Aug 2042
Mateus Mané runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market18 Aug 2042
Daniel Taylor steps up from the Sunderland academy
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Daniel Taylor has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
In brief
- Market Sunderland promote Benjamin Parker from within
- Market Mark Marshall steps up from the Sunderland academy
- Market Daniel Robinson steps up from the Sunderland academy