Alex Neil admits Sunderland showed 'the best and the worst of us in one match' in their dramatic victory against Shrewsbury Town. The Black Cats made an outstanding start, with goals from Elliot Embleton and Nathan Broadhead giving them a 2-0 lead inside the opening quarter-of-an-hour.
But Sunderland ceded the initiative to Shrewsbury as half-time approached and they came back into the game, scoring twice after the break to level things up before the hour mark. And it needed another injury-time goal from Broadhead - who had scored a 95th minute winner in the previous home game - to earn the points.
"What you've seen today is the best and the worst of us in one match," said Neil. "The first 40 minutes was as good and as clean as we have moved the ball all season, we moved it at real tempo and created a lot of problems for them, they couldn't really get near it and they didn't have an answer for what we were trying to do.
Go here for all the latest Sunderland AFC news
"But then a sloppiness crept in about five minutes before half-time, too many people taking too many touches, complicating the game, trying to show everybody how good they are and what happened was they [Shrewsbury] started to get a bit of a sniff of the match and thought that they could get something out of it. They scored a goal that was disallowed, and I warned the players at half-time that they were going to have to win their battles, win the second balls, you are going to have to stop their momentum and get the next goal to kill the game.
"If we get the next goal it's done; if they get the next goal it's game on. But we got beat up for 20 minutes, that's the be-all and end-all. It wasn't a structural problem, you could see at the end that we were totally dominant - the game hadn't changed - what happened was that we didn't win enough first balls, we didn't win enough second balls, we got penned in and we didn't defend well enough.
"That's really odd because for the first ten games of me being here, that's been an aspect of our game that has been really strong. What we do have is a real resilience, a determination, a fitness level, and quality that allows us to go and win games late in the match.
"I thought we deserved to win the game. We had a really poor 20 minutes but apart from that, I thought we were far and away the better side."
Neil was, unsurprisingly, happy with a win which extended his side's unbeaten streak to nine games and keeps them firmly on course for a play-off place. But he was disappointed that it will be their 20 minute sloppy spell that will be the focus, rather than the quality they showed either side of that period.
He said: "If I was one of the players on the pitch, I would have been fearful of losing the game after playing so well for 40 minutes. That would have driven me on.
"I said to the players that the way they had moved the ball in the first 40 minutes should be what people are talking about at the end of the game, but it won't be unless you do it again in the second half. And unfortunately, it's not the talking point because what everybody will talk about is that 20 minute period.
"They will be talking about our resilience and determination, when they should be talking about our quality. We now don't deserve that because of that 20 minute period.
"We needed to kill the game off in that spell and unfortunately we got sloppy and didn't compete well enough which nearly cost us, but we got there in the end."
Neil made a change immediately after Shrewsbury equalised, sending on Corry Evans in place of Embleton in an attempt to tighten up the midfield at a stage when Sunderland were rocking after seeing their lead evaporate. He said: "When we're trying to win games, you want as many attacking players on the pitch as you can.
"And that 40 minutes was what happens when they are all firing. What also happens is that 20 minutes when the game goes against you and you're asking attacking players to defend, and that looseness and lack of grit and fight - and I'm not levelling that at any one player - it's just not the forte of those attacking players.
"If you want to play regularly and you want to be in a successful team, you need to do both facets of the game."
For the latest Sunderland news direct to your inbox, go here to sign up to our free newsletter
