The footballing equivalent of finding that you’ve been burgled, but that the intruders only stole a bath mat and a pair of wellington boots. A bad day for sure, but one that could have been much, much worse.
Exhibit A: Kieron Richardson hits a laser beam free-kick, it crashes into the post, flies across the goal, hits the other post, still has the momentum to travel across the goal again, and finally settles with Mark Schwarzer, possibly via the post again. A physics defying escape.
Exhibit B: Kieron Richardson hits a laser beam free-kick. It flies into the top corner. The referee disallows it because Pascal Chimbonda has interfered with the defensive wall. An irrelevant foul and a bizarre let off.
Exhibit C: Djibril Cisse turns and smashes a volley against the crossbar from 25 yards. Supporters in the Putney End are lucky not to have had a goal frame heading their way, but somehow the moorings held firm. “Crikey”, as Toby’s subsequent text put it.
Also offered for consideration: many other near misses that had Sunderland fans up and then down in interrupted ecstacy, including a goal line clearance by an alert Aaron Hughes.
Against that, Fulham had some chances. The threat came in the form of the elusive Zoltan Gera, who time and again managed to find space and opportunities. In the first half he wriggled free, half-rounded Gordon, but could not convert an awkward chance. Soon after Andy Johnson crossed from the left, but Gera couldn’t sort his feet out and missed everything with the goal available. Next he arrived from nowhere with a terrific diving header, but Gordon saved it. He also shot high and towards Putney from the edge of the area. In the second half he again slipped his market, but headed straight at Gordon again.
You can look at this as a failure to make things count, or you can applaud the player for causing far more trouble than the rest of his teammates combined. I choose the latter, and was disappointed when Gera was substituted. It seemed clear by then that Sunderland were very happy to deal with Johnson and Zamora, so in some ways Gera was our only hope. He or Bullard, whose shooting is soon going to be compared to latter-era Papa Bouba Diop if he doesn’t sort himself out. Bullard again ran around like a hyperactive child, and again mixed decent build up play with passes direct to the advertising hoardings. He is doing too little with too much possession.
The consolation to all this was that the defence played quite well. Hangeland was quietly faultless, and Aaron Hughes read the game well and helped keep things close. Paintsil and Konchesky performed reasonably either side of them. This is encouraging, in so far as we thought this may be a problem area this season. Instead we find ourselves with five goals in seven games and a nagging feeling that this team is in danger of becoming over-coached, wooden, and predictable. We shall see.
