EFL Cup 3rd Round
Team: Ingram, Kakay, Lynch, Caulker, Hamalainen, Cousins (Chery), Sandro, Wszolek, El Khayati, Washington (Luongo), Sylla (Polter)
Subs Not Used: Smithies, Onuoha, Paul, Borysiuk
Attendance: 14,301 (including 2,214 away fans)
Watching fairly high up in R Block, I had a good view of all the goalmouth action (our goalmouth!) in the first-half; that Sunderland didn’t score goes a long way to explaining why they’re doing so badly in the Premier.
Second-half I thought we played much better, half-time bollocking no doubt – hence our goal and a sense of optimism that, cruelly, didn’t last long.
Talk about a game of two halves!
steveqpr881
We saw a centre-forward playing left wing? Then got replaced by a midfielder? Cousins played his best game so far and gets substituted? Then we had El Khayati who had a very poor game playing the 90 minutes?
Sylla, the player chosen to play alone upfront hardly touched the ball. Youngster Osman Kakay played really well at right-back and didn’t look out of place. He’ll probably never play again.
Getting more clueless by the week!
ChrisPTenner
Paddy McNair scored twice as Sunderland beat Championship side QPR in the third round of the EFL Cup at Loftus Road.
The visitors fell behind on the hour mark when Brazil midfielder Sandro hooked in a half-volley.
Ex-Manchester United midfielder McNair levelled ten minutes later, finishing off a one-two with Duncan Watmore.
McNair then tapped in the rebound after Matt Ingram parried Didier Ndong’s strike to earn the Black Cats a trip to Southampton in the fourth round.
Both of Sunderland’s wins this season have come in this competition, with new manager David Moyes yet to record a Premier League victory since taking over.
Dutch defender Patrick van Aanholt was one of six changes for Sunderland, playing the full game after he was left out of Sunday’s 1-0 defeat at Tottenham after medical advice from heart specialists.
Sunderland manager David Moyes: “We played some good stuff and I’m just glad we got through as it’s always a tough game coming here.”
“I thought we did some good things, especially in the second-half, and I didn’t think we deserved to go a goal down when we did.”
“We just lacked the experienced forward players who maybe could have finished the game off earlier, but some of our play was quite good.”
QPR boss Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink: “I don’t like losing but if we are to lose to Premier League opposition, that was the way to do it, if you understand what I’m saying. If we are going to lose, it needs to be like this. With a gritty, hungry, honest and hardworking display.”
“We showed that we are a good team tonight I thought. I’m proud of how we conducted ourselves. I take a lot of positives out of the game, and not so many negatives.”
BBC Sport
Sandro hadn’t played competitive football since the previous round and he was back again tonight along with a couple of our young players, Osman Kakay and Niko Hamalainen, who made his 1st team debut, whilst Pawel Wszolek and Idrissa Sylla made their first starts.
Matt Ingram made a couple of superb saves in the 1st half and the R’s went very close when one effort was cleared off the line.
Good interview with Ian Gillard at the break. He spoke well about our two youngsters 1st half performances. And on the 1967 League Cup Final day he said that he had played for the youth team against West Ham in the morning and they then went on to Wembley.
After the match he signed pro-forms in a hotel. He also told us about cleaning Mark Lazarus’s boots and that Mark always reminded him about it!
How agonising was that miss by Conor Washington at the near post from close range!
Wild celebrations around the ground when Sandro belted in our goal on the half-volley!
I was disappointed when Jordan Cousins was taken off after such an accomplished performance.
Despite the defeat it was generally a good atmosphere, helped by a turnout of over 2,000 Sunderland fans
Steve Russell