Smog Blogs

Team: Coyne, Shead, Otte, Oliver (Park), Weldon, Smallwood, Williams, Halliday, Kink, Alliadiere, Tavares

We started off brightly enough playing some good passing football with Sunderland soaking up the pressure, pretty comfortably to be honest. Then young Kyle Oliver playing at centre back got a head injury and had to go off after about 25mins and we went to pot. Smallwood had to switch to centre-back and Cameron Park came on. It wasn't that Smallwood was poor at centre-back, we missed him bossing the centre of the park and Sunderland took control of the game.

At the start, Tavares was playing on the left-wing and Halliday on the right, I thought Strachan was back for a second until I gave my head a shake. So Tavares switched to the middle and Park went to the left, when Oliver went off and L.Williams played centre mid as well, he didn't look comfortable.

Anyway, Alliadiere had a run out playing lone centre forward with Kink playing behind him, neither had great games, Kink had a few shots but they were well off the mark, he also seems to play with his head down a lot and trys to take people on too much instead of looking for the pass. Halliday and Williams looked a little out of their depth although that might be because they were both playing out of position. Cameron Park didn't do much when he came on apart from one brilliant defense splitting pass which we failed to take advantage of.

Shead looks like a decent right-back, he's got a bit of pace; likes to go forward and looks strong enough for a young'n, but the player who stood out the most for me was Weldon playing at centre-back; never put a foot wrong all match. He's got pace and knows how to defend properly, throwing himself around like Bates does, getting in last-ditch tackles and seems to take a lot of pride in not getting beat. He started out as a left-back I think but he'd been switched to the centre. He's looks a little lightweight for the first team yet but definitely is one for the future; he signed a two year pro contract in August and judging by today's performance, that was a really good piece of business.

Franks getting a 30 minute run out was great news; that lad run his heart out for us last season when he played and it was good to see him back.