Away Match Day Thread +++ 03/08/2019 L1: Sunderland v OUFC MDT +++

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As I recall in the home game v the black cats last season,Eastwood was blatantly blocked off for their goal from a corner and the goal stood.
Unfortunately the standard of refereeing is poor at this level.It seems ironic that the best referees will be helped with VAR to come to the correct decision whereas we will have to put up with it for most of the season.
We can only hope that these poor decisions balance themselves out
 
Mackie always plays to the limits of the rules, and will block and harass the keeper but having seen that picture you'd have to say that it was the right decision to give the foul. But I would argue that he didn't need to do it as there was no stopping Dickie and he would have probably beat the keeper to the ball anyway.

The penalty was difficult as you could clearly see that the ball was played, but Ruffels was a bit clumsy in going to ground so easily. It gave the ref a decision to make as to whether the player was impeded before the ball was touched. Having already seen his bias we gave him that opportunity to get Sunderland back into it.

But aside from those two decisions, I thought that we still edged the game and gave Sunderland plenty to worry about. Fosu and Woodburn tired, but scared the hell out of Sunderland in the first 30 mins. Mackie did what Mackie does. He ran and hassled and gave others space. His awareness of blocking off the defender for Fosu's goal is something that only he really brings to the game. Along with Henry they made it an uncomfortable day for their defence. Gorrin and Brannagan look a real class apart, and the defence was immense. Eastwood made a couple of decent saves and never looked troubled, the penalty aside, Ruffels was solid, Cadden looked good and will trouble teams going forward, Mous was absolutely solid and led the defence well, but top marks to Dickie who has really stepped up and looks a natural leader who I would give the captains arm band to when Moore eventually replaces Mous.

It's amazing how much can change within a week, but after losing Whyte last weekend and the fears of replicating last seasons start, to a real belief that we can really challenge in this league. And we've still got Moore to come in, Woodburn to get sharp, Hall and Mackie to get to full fitness, Forde to come in, and the potential for 3 more players including a striker or 2!!!

The future's bright - the future is yellow!!!

PS. I told you not to worry!!! ?
 
Early days but I would be just slightly concerned if I was a Sunderland fan.
With McNulty, Grigg, Whitmore, McGready you would expect them to cause us more problems.
Last season we were awful at Barnsley but they looked definite promotion material.
We were much better yesterday but Sunderland looked pretty average.
 
As for Oxford?
With new players starting and Nelson Whyte, Browne missing from last season, we looked pretty well organised. For the first half an hour we were by far the better team.
We did seem to tire and the penalty came at a bad time right at the start of the second half.
From then we battled very well for the point.
Dickie was immense. Mous did very well ( he captained well as times the game nearly turned a bit nasty)
I really like the look of Gorrin who is a good passer of the ball as well as his tackling and workrate.
Fosu looked very sharp and caused them problems in the first half an hour.
All of the players put a shift in and based on yesterday with the money they have spent, I reckon KR did a better job than Ross)
 
As I recall in the home game v the black cats last season,Eastwood was blatantly blocked off for their goal from a corner and the goal stood.
Unfortunately the standard of refereeing is poor at this level.It seems ironic that the best referees will be helped with VAR to come to the correct decision whereas we will have to put up with it for most of the season.
We can only hope that these poor decisions balance themselves out
the football gods usually even things out. still doesn’t excuse that yesterday though
 
After 1 game we're 12th in the league.
At the same stage last season we were 24th and finished the season in 12th.
So by my calculation, a similar 12 place improvement this season would see us finish .........1st.
We're gonna win the league!

Also we are 13 points above bottom place, which we didn't achieve until April last season!
 
Deja vu..........
Same as last season for much of the game....
The yellows came out of the traps determined to press high, be aggressive in the defence and keep the ball moving in the middle of the park...
The goal came after the home side defenders dilly and dallied with the ball in an area they shouldn’t be doing it howveryou could argue that we should and could have been 1-0 up before the goal came. The next 15 - 20 minutes after the goal was all Oxford and when Dickie slammed the ball into the back of the net with a bullet header from a corner it sent the 1100 or so Yellows fans absolutely crazy albeit only for about 10 seconds until it turned to heads in hands and hands on heads as fans were looking around to actually find out why the goal was disallowed.
It seemed to disrupt us as a team for the remainder of the first half as Sunderland seemed to have more of the ball without really doing much with it and when we did try and break away there was always a foot left in or a push on an Oxford player to break the play up and on the half time whistle the 2nd goal we so deserved did not come...
The 2nd half was all about one man, no it wasn’t Ben Woodburn, or any other yellows players, it wasn’t Karl Robinson, it wasn’t even any of the Sunderland players of any of their coaches, it was the shower of sh1t of a referee who lost the whole concept of the game with a string of bad decisions, bias, incompetence, lack of experience, not up to reffing a big crowd, who knows.. we can’t change it, he will certainly know by now if he has seen replays of the disallowed goal and the penalty incident that one if not both decisions were incorrect which cost us 3 valuable points on the road.
We all would have settled for a point earlier this week and two weeks ago it was more like keeping the score down as there was little activity from the club in attracting good players in time for the season opener.
So all in all, a long journey, proper home fans, a cracking stadium, the yellows were there in numbers and sang their hearts out and although early days it looks like we have the basis of a team on the pitch to be proud of....

Agree Lincoln, but felt we looked leggy for most of the second half. I guess players need to get up to match fitness.

We also lacked an outlet yesterday, and pace.

Difficult to say where we’ll end up on that showing, but I’d say between 8th and 12th, if we get some decent strikers and pace then higher. Oh, and the players gain more match fitness.
 
One result, a draw, has demonstrated our mastery, I see.
 
Mackie always plays to the limits of the rules, and will block and harass the keeper but having seen that picture you'd have to say that it was the right decision to give the foul. But I would argue that he didn't need to do it as there was no stopping Dickie and he would have probably beat the keeper to the ball anyway.

The penalty was difficult as you could clearly see that the ball was played, but Ruffels was a bit clumsy in going to ground so easily. It gave the ref a decision to make as to whether the player was impeded before the ball was touched. Having already seen his bias we gave him that opportunity to get Sunderland back into it.

But aside from those two decisions, I thought that we still edged the game and gave Sunderland plenty to worry about. Fosu and Woodburn tired, but scared the hell out of Sunderland in the first 30 mins. Mackie did what Mackie does. He ran and hassled and gave others space. His awareness of blocking off the defender for Fosu's goal is something that only he really brings to the game. Along with Henry they made it an uncomfortable day for their defence. Gorrin and Brannagan look a real class apart, and the defence was immense. Eastwood made a couple of decent saves and never looked troubled, the penalty aside, Ruffels was solid, Cadden looked good and will trouble teams going forward, Mous was absolutely solid and led the defence well, but top marks to Dickie who has really stepped up and looks a natural leader who I would give the captains arm band to when Moore eventually replaces Mous.

It's amazing how much can change within a week, but after losing Whyte last weekend and the fears of replicating last seasons start, to a real belief that we can really challenge in this league. And we've still got Moore to come in, Woodburn to get sharp, Hall and Mackie to get to full fitness, Forde to come in, and the potential for 3 more players including a striker or 2!!!

The future's bright - the future is yellow!!!

PS. I told you not to worry!!! ?

Agree with most of that apart from I thought Gorrin gave the ball away too much and Ruffels looked poor. Just lacks any know how going forward, and was poor defensively at times, especially the penalty.

Best three players were Dickie, Brannagan and Mackie.

Fosu like you say was good for 39mins but after that faded giving us no outlet.

Glad to get a point in the end, but could have and probably should have been more.

Sunderland were so poor AGAIN.
 
What did you think of the performance/result?
I’ve already posted my thoughts.

A good gritty performance. Classy from Dickie. Impressed by Cadden, Henry and Fosu.

I also thought the opposition were dire. Whether or not that’s down to us or them will reveal itself over time.

I don’t think it was a performance worthy of the self-congratulatory tone of many posts, though.

Plenty of encouragement and that for me is enough after one game.
 
I thought was a good performance from us got straight at sunderland ... and we know they dont like that ....we tired in the second half badly...as much as I like mackie hes not git the legs for 90 minutes but last 30 minute man now sadly....fosu was electric for first 35/40 minutes bit obviously not match fit along with quite a few others a striker or 2 and match fitness I have a feeling we could do sometin ths,seson....oh and mous was solid
 
Watched on ifollow. Overall, great performance and effort from the team. Played with intensity and looked pretty well organized. We will get a lot better I’m sure, could be in for an exciting season!. Ref was a joke, biased toward Sunderland from around 32mins (Dickies disallowed goal).
 
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