Luke O’Nien has admitted that Coventry City’s opener really cost Sunderland the game today.
Michael Beale was desperate to get off to a winning start after being appointed as Sunderland boss earlier this week.
The 43-year-old departed the pitch to a chorus of boos though, having led the Black Cats to a underwhelming 3-0 defeat on home turf.
Sunderland weren’t playing particularly great football in the early stages anyway, but it was made dramatically worse when Coventry took the lead right on half-time.
Luke O’Nien played his part with some terrible defending as he took down an opposing player, before the referee gave the Sky Blues the advantage which resulted in Tatsuhiro Sakamoto’s opener.
It was an all-round poor performance by Sunderland as the visitors went onto add a further two goals in the second half, but Luke O’Nien claimed that it was conceding just before half-time that really killed them.
When asked where it went wrong by the club media, the captain said: “Probably conceding just before half time. If you go into the break 0-0 I think it suits us. When we’ve kept it tight until half time I think teams start to tire. Like we did in the second half we had a lot of possession and a lot of chances.
“It was maybe a but of a sucker punch conceding there, got a little bit too tight and they got in behind, a bit of a deflection that didn’t go our way either. We have to take our chances, we have to tighten up at the back, but I think we got a few things wrong today.
“These are the days you learn the most about the team and are going to be the biggest lessons for us. Like always nothing changes, we do a debrief and prepare for the next game. We are not far off a bad team at all, we are good, we are three points off the play-offs, have performed well in the last few weeks and just haven’t quite got the results.”
Should Luke O’Nien be dropped?
It’s nice of Luke O’Nien to admit that that first goal was costly, because it was mostly him that was at fault for it.
The defender actually looked pretty solid for most of the half, but that goal pretty much summed up him as a player at the minute.
O’Nien seems to get away with a lot of situations like that, but he paid the price this time and it resulted in a much more concerning situation going into the second half.
While he is the captain and an incredibly likeable person, Michael Beale surely has to start considering his place in the team. Jenson Seelt was brilliant against Leeds United and perhaps deserves to challenge O’Nien, while the return of Aji Alese to the U21s this week could also add competition.