Sunderland 4 Stoke C 0:WITH SPECULATION surrounding his future in the wake of the defeat to Chelsea last weekend, their eighth reverse in nine at home, Steve Bruce approached this match yesterday fearing a repeat outcome could herald the end of his Wearside tenure.
Such a result would have left Sunderland propping up the Premier League table, not the position that owner, Ellis Short, had envisaged when he sanctioned a summer spending spree that brought in 11 new faces. But of the seven of those who started for the visit of Stoke City, two were to make a match-winning – and potentially for Bruce, job-saving – contribution.
Sebastian Larsson scored once and assisted twice, and Craig Gardner scored his first for his new club. Afterwards, Bruce, perhaps mindful of the column inches devoted to his position in recent days, chose to stay silent. His assistant Eric Black admitted that the manager had been affected by the win-less start.
“It hurts him when he doesn’t win because he’s a winner; he always has been and always will be,” he said after Sunderland moved to 12th in the table. “It hurts him when it doesn’t go the way he wants it and sometimes I think the criticism is unfair. But such is life, that’s the pressure of a manager in the Premier League.”
Scrutiny of Bruce intensified following the early-season derby defeat to Newcastle United, whose subsequent rise to fourth has merely served to amplify pressure.
Ironically, it was two former Newcastle players who settled Bruce’s nerves. Titus Bramble netted the opener, turning Larsson’s corner through the grasp of Asmir Begovic.
Within five minutes the hosts had doubled their tally for the season, Larsson’s cross turned over Begovic by the hapless, backpedaling Jonathan Woodgate, another former Newcastle player.
By the half-hour it was three, Gardner seeing a 20-yard strike deflect beyond a rooted Begovic via Ryan Shawcross. And Larsson crowned his afternoon with an arrowed free-kick on 58 minutes.
It was the first time the visitors had conceded four in the league in 16 months, but their manager, Tony Pulis, refused to use their Europa League trip to Kiev on Thursday as an excuse.
Referring to the tragedy in Swansea in which four miners lost their lives, he said: “If you look at South Wales and see what has happened down there, we live in a bubble in football and sometimes you have to look outside. Those poor people have been underground working very hard to look after their families and they would earn in a year what some of our players earn in a week.
“We cuddle our players too much at times and there’s no way in a million years anybody at Stoke City will make excuses for travelling and then coming back and having bad performances.”
Bruce’s post-game silence, despite the opportunity for exultation, suggests a weariness in fielding questions regarding his position. Yesterday, though, his players did the talking for him.
