Dwight Gayle goads Sunderland fans with amusing goal celebrations as the atmosphere turns sour for those inside the Stadium of Light.
The former Newcastle player was one of the many goalscorers as Stoke strolled to a 5-1 victory, with much of the 43,000+ home crowd gone by full time.
The miserable day began with the Potters scoring their opening goal through Josh Laurent four minutes before the half-time break.
Stoke then saw Tyrese Campbell and Dwight Gayle both get a double, sealing a comfortable Championship victory despite Alex Pritchard scoring one for Sunderland.
After Gayle’s first goal, a PA announcer had to tell supporters not to throw missiles towards him as he celebrated close to some of the home crowd.
Dwight Gayle’s celebration 🤣🤣 #NUFC pic.twitter.com/7gYsOoSCLd
— Adam. (@AdamNUFC_) March 4, 2023
Black Cats boss Tony Mowbray said, as per Sunderland Echo. “I’m not sure we’ve lost too many games by more than one goal since I’ve been here, so I didn’t see it coming.
“We’re a team that try to dominate the ball and they want to stop you, break on you and counter – and they did that better than we did. I was really disappointed with the lack of bravery in trying to keep the ball and pick it up in the positions that we normally would. I didn’t think it was a normal Sunderland game where I feel that we’ve been in control, recently we’ve struggled to score in games where we’ve dominated but I didn’t feel we had that control today.
“Is that because they were so good out of possession, or a lack of bravery in possession from us? It’s probably a bit of both.
“I’ve just said to the players, we can’t accept that a team is quite good out of possession because every team will do that if they think that’s a winning formula. So we either change everything or get better at what we do – and we needed to be better at what we do today.
“We have played Jack Clarke up front recently but he finds that role difficult and so we tried to play through the press.
“We didn’t have much success so credit to them. They did what they do better than us doing what we doing.
“It’s very unlike us [to lose that heavily]. We have to keep pushing with what we think is the best way for this team to play, and I hope that’s given a lot of people of joy across the season so far.
“That hasn’t happened today and I apologise to the supporters who came today because we want to be the best version of ourselves.
“We want to be a team who dominates the ball and it’s a learning curve for us – the better you become at it, the braver you become with it. The disappointing thing for me is, you can lose confidence but you have to still compete, and the result reflects the disappointment of us all at how that game unfolded. We’re normally a very competitive team.”
Tony Mowbray reflects on today’s game.
Full interview… 📺👇 pic.twitter.com/kjsNiYYMAY
— Sunderland AFC (@SunderlandAFC) March 4, 2023
Stoke’s Alex Neil said, as per the club website: “We knew what type of game it was going to be and we wanted to make sure we restricted Sunderland playing in pockets like they do.
“They’ve got a lot of technical players in that area and we wanted to make sure they didn’t get into their flow in the game and also that when we turned the ball over we were going to be dangerous in transition. The game plan worked for us worked as well as it probably could.
“Once you get the first goal it opens up even more and they open up and become more expansive, which leaves more spaces for us to counter.
“I knew it was going to be contrasting styles and we’re big, strong and powerful and Sunderland are smaller, technical and work the ball really well.
“It was going to be a case of who did it better and we did it better in the game, although goals change games, which we’ve discussed a few times this season. We’re really, really pleased we won the game.
“We’ve spoken at length about sometimes not being as threatening as we should be during games. Today we carried a real threat. There were sometimes towards the end when we could have scored another couple of goals.
“I just thought we knew in transition that we were going to be a threat. I thought Will Smallbone was sensational again. From our perspective it was a great victory.”
This is what fans had to say after Dwight Gayle goads Sunderland fans with goal celebrations as the atmosphere turns sour…
@JoeThirlwell1: Lack of a recognised striker was again an issue today & what most people are concentrating on. I fear not replacing Evans in Jan was a bigger mistake by the recruitment team on todays evidence. Dan Neil had a shocker but was left massively exposed in the system we played. #SAFC
@AG17__: close game lads thought we could of won it in added time
@SandDancing:
Two poor transfer windows
Poor choice of starting line up.
Poor refereeing
Terrible passing
None existent hold up play.
Confusing substitutions
Embarrassing collapse of home support.
#SAFC #Sunderland @bbcnewcastle @SunderlandAFC @RokerReport @ALS_Fanzine @SpeakSAFC
@C_P_C_Y_R_K: @SunderlandAFC lose and twitter turns into a war between all fans! Look today was embarrassing but we’re still 5 points from the playoffs, surely you’d be happy with that at the start of the season! We will lose, we will have times like these….WIP, be patient! #SAFC
@GeoffRamm: Amazing how we blame fatigue and yet the oldest player on the pitch Jagielka was completely untroubled today… the worst performance of the season and our board let this happen with zero ambition in January #safc
@BradleyDSharp11: If you’re actually calling for Mowbray to be sacked, then take your hand and slap yourself in the face. That was the same group of players that beat QPR. It’s the fact Speakman didn’t sign a striker and an experienced CM that is costing us. The Mowbray out lot are pathetic. #safc
@haymansafc: Whatever the issues up front this is awful from Mowbray. It should be easy enough to set this team up and make them hard to beat and still have some talented footballers to give us a chance at the other end. Horrendous performance and horrendous officiating again. #SAFC
@Mr_magoo199: I don’t know why people are calling for Mowbray to be sacked, that is not the answer at all and should have learned after sacking the last god knows how many managers. Has to take responsibility with his decisions though. Change team, they got to comfy being auto selected. #safc
@CaitlinW_31: Honestly no words for today. Wish I could say all the blame was on the ref although YET AGAIN their performance was abysmal, Sunderland just did not show up at all today. A bit worried about their confidence now. #SAFC
@MiserableMackem: Today was and is worse than the Bolton 0-6 by the way. I genuinely, hand on heart, can not see us getting another point between now and the 7th of April. The way we’re playing, to be confident of beating even Hull is a stretch. #SAFC
@neilmack84: Well that was awful. Referee dreadful. But Sunderland were outdone tactically & physically. AN had them set up on the transition, particularly from our set pieces as well as targeting us from set pieces. Desperately lacking experience, big few weeks now to steady the ship #SAFC
@skennedy30: Well. That was, and I cannot understate this enough, utter shit. Desperately lacking experience in midfield and a presence up front. Bad run against decent opposition incoming, and hopefully lessons learnt for the next transfer window, but I won’t count on it #safc
@swinneymr: At least they had a few days off to recharge this week. Worked wonders.
@safcpete67: #SAFC people calling out DN , yes he made mistakes but the blame starts with TM. A stupid weak selection with no support alongside Dan. Luke or Ekwah needs to be in there as help. We are out coached and out muscled today.
@bujaan_: I stayed until the final whistle to avoid the traffic rush.
@Mr_magoo199: Is the team still playing for you Tony? Because it seems like half of them have downed tools. Need to drop players for next game and start the young lads.
@liam_oxley: Really really poor! We have been off for a few weeks now. When it gets tough you MUST have seasoned pros! Simple! @krespeakman to blame! Really naive from the club!
@Pxwerr17: Even worse than Bolton away that, play offs was more than a dream – proud of the boys they made us proud this season, let’s just enjoy the rest and build for the next season
— Iain (@Iain_Scarlett) March 4, 2023
You must be logged in to post a comment Login