"It feels like back to drawing board for me after that," said Alex Neil. "I don't want to put a dampener on a win, but I'm not taking massive satisfaction from that at all to be honest."
Neil made no attempt to put a positive spin on Sunderland's poor performance in victory against Fleetwood Town. The 3-1 scoreline at the Stadium of Light may have looked comfortable at full-time, but to say it flattered the Black Cats would be an understatement.
Neil could have shrugged off the display and insisted the result was all that mattered, given Sunderland's situation in the play-off race means they need to win games by hook or by crook in the run-in. But instead he was honest enough to admit that the result had merely papered over the cracks.
His 'back to the drawing board' comment related to his frustration at the way his side had played in the wake of two much-improved performances on the road at Wigan and Charlton, which had yielded a win and a draw respectively. Because in the first half against Fleetwood, Sunderland had dominated the ball yet had been second-best in every department, and a dreadful error from the normally-reliable Bailey Wright had gifted Ellis Harrison the opening goal.
Sunderland were floundering against a Fleetwood side that had arrived on Wearside on the back of a nine-game winless streak, and which was hovering just above the relegation zone. To Neil's credit, he was bold and proactive and made changes to both personnel and system at half-time.
He sent on Jermain Defoe and Lynden Gooch in place of Corry Evans and Arbenit Xhemajli, and switched from 4-2-3-1 to 3-5-2 with Carl Winchester and Dennis Cirkin operating as centre-backs either side of Wright, and with Gooch and Jack Clarke as the wingbacks. Neil had wanted to make those changes before half-time but the new head coach admitted that he has not yet worked with these players long enough to make such an important structural shift on the fly, and had to wait until he could gather them in the dressing room.
The switch was a high-stakes gamble that could have gone either way, but it paid off with Elliot Embleton levelling early in the second period, before sub Luke O'Nien marked his comeback after three-and-a-half months out injured with a goal in the final ten minutes, and on-loan Spurs man Clarke sealed the win in injury time. Fleetwood finished the game with ten men when Zak Jules was sent off for a second bookable offence, but that had little bearing with Sunderland already 2-1 up at the time.
Let's be clear: even in the second half, Sunderland's performance was nothing to write home about, but they did at least do enough to earn Neil his first home win, and to climb to fifth in the table and back into the play-off positions. With basement side Crewe due to visit on Saturday, this is a week when nothing less than six points will be good enough if Sunderland are to claim a top six finish come the end of April and give themselves any chance of achieving promotion via the play-offs.
Against Fleetwood, they dug themselves out of a hole and got the job done, but that was about it. Against a better team, on a different day, they might not have been so lucky.
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