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What The Gaffer Said
David Moyes will have been absolutely gutted to have had his first victory as Sunderland manager snatched away due to a completely avoidable error - the poor bloke can't catch a break at the minute.
Speaking to SAFC.com, he said:
I’m happy to get a point, but disappointed we didn’t get three and that we couldn’t see the game out.
Jordan Pickford knows he could have done better for the goal, but apart from that I think he did very well throughout the game.
It was always going to be hard coming here as we know Southampton are a good side and they did well against Manchester United last week.
They had a lot of the ball and there were times we had to defend really well. We had a period just before half time where we did really well but we know we’ve got to improve on that.
We’ve still got work to do and we know that, we must stop dropping points in games and see them out until the end.
It’s important that we’ve got that point on the board, especially from a difficult away game. I said I thought we were unlucky to drop points at Man City and I think the same here today.
We’ve now got to work on turning around the stuff that isn’t going in our favour and get more points on the board.
There’s an international break coming now and that hopefully gives us time to get players in and get injured players back fit again.
He's trying to remain positive, and it's an important point that he makes right at the end there - this upcoming international break couldn't have came at a better time for us. We need to get players back fit so we can kick start our faltering season.
Kone Is Quality
Isn't it a shame that Lamine Kone has let his mask slip this summer? It doesn't matter what he (or whoever runs his account) puts out on Twitter before a game, he's got plenty of making up to do with Sunderland fans before he can be trusted again. He needs to do his talking on the pitch - and for me, he was man of the match at the weekend.
He's just a very good footballer, and his inclusion on the pitch makes us immensely better. If Lamine commits to a new contract and stays here for a year or two then we'll be much better off for it.
Manquillo's Debut Was Impressive
It's still early days but Javi Manquillo was very impressive on his Sunderland debut and if we can get a settled back four with him on the right hand side, I'm positive that we'll be fine.
He looked very comfortable on the ball and was defensively sound too. Moyes mentioned that his English isn't good so I expect that there will be times where he'll struggle with communication but as far as debuts go, his was pretty flawless.
Donald Love... Why?
When a young player is struggling badly, the first thing you'd do is take him out of the firing line, surely?
Well, apparently not. I'm not sure what the thinking was in putting Love on into central midfield, but it wasn't a particularly safe or clever thing to do.
Going forward we need to allow Love to become accustomed to life in Sunderland and at our club.
Now that we have Javi Manquillo and Billy Jones returning, I'd like to hope that our manager will show Donald some love and give him some time to settle in properly, because constantly throwing the lad into pressure situations clearly isn't helping him.
