1. Adam Johnson keeps his goalscoring form at his favourite ground
Johnson admitted that Newcastle United fans must hate him after his goal condemned the Magpies to their fourth consecutive Tyne-Wear derby defeat. This became the first time Sunderland have won four in a row against Newcastle in the 116-year old history of their derby.
It was a special moment for the Sunderland-born winger, not only because of his history with Newcastle as a young player, but also the fact that he has scored in all of his last three visits to his favourite away stadium.
2. Alan Pardew’s move backfired
In his pre-match interview, Pardew drew a lot of confidence from the fact that he had five local players in his starting XI.
In this game Newcastle were clearly fired up, the determination and industry of those locals was epitomised by Steven Taylor who was desperate to stay on the pitch despite suffering cuts to his right cheek and above his right eye when the defender collided with the post.
Unfortunately for them, their drive led Newcastle to over-commit in the last period of the game when the Magpies pushed for a winner which allowed Sunderland to create a couple of good chances on the break before stealing a win on the break.
3. Pardew will have to wait for his first victory over Poyet
Pardew has never won against a side managed by Poyet. In this seventh meeting between the pair, the Black Cats boss won and deservedly so, despite Newcastle’s late rally, because Sunderland created better chances.
4. Newcastle wasted a good opportunity to hurt Sunderland
Poyet’s perfect record against Newcastle as Sunderland manager was in serious danger at the start of the game when veteran left-back Anthony Reveillere picked a calf injury in the warm-up. With no recognised full-back on the bench, Sunderland had to draft Sebastien Coates into the side.
John O’Shea pulled out to left-back in the reshuffled back-four so Newcastle had the perfect chance to exploit Sunderland’s left flank with O’Shea featuring in that area for the first time in a while.
Yoan Gouffran, who has pace to burn, rarely isolated O’Shea. When Newcastle tried switching their wide midfielders midway into the first-half, Sammy Ameobi also gave O’Shea no problems. In the end Sunderland’s back-four had a fairly comfortable afternoon.
5. Sunderland still need to work on their finishing despite the win
Poyet may have raised a few eyebrows before this game when he recently criticised his player’s finishing but this game proved again that the Black Cats need to work on their finishing.
Their central midfielders dominated play for most of the game; Lee Cattermole dictated play from the deep, Jordi Gomez made some intelligent runs towards the left flank and Sebastian Larsson was the man of the match with his passing.
That success in central areas gifted Sunderland with a lot of good chances but they found the target with only 20 per cent of their goal attempts. Even Newcastle on their bad day were more than twice as accurate in front of goal with 47 per cent of their attempts at least testing Costel Pantilimon.
Sunderland deserved their win as a side but their finishing still needs a lot of work because their midfielders will not keep on creating the chances they did in this game.
