A good first half performance from us - we pressed them really hard, scored one, and could have had a few more. Delivery into the box was good for a change, but too often there was nobody on the end, or nobody following up when the ball bobbled back out.

On the plus side, Rowlands looked really fired up, which partially made up for the fact that Santos was playing in midfield and being inept as always. Why does Santos get picked every week?

Unfortunately, Rowlands got injured and had to be replaced, and the tide turned. Sturridge came on to replace him, with Gallen dropping back into midfield, which isn’t his best position.

The second half saw a further reorganisation of our formation, with Bircham playing on the right and Gallen in the middle. We looked a bit muddled, Birch lost his man who went on to score, and within a minute of the restart we were back to 1-1. Sturridge then got injured and had to limp out of his home debut, to be replaced by Cureton. Our organisation hadn’t really recovered from the first substitution, and after the second it was just a bit of a mess.

Mick McCarthy also made a couple of good tactical changes, putting on some very large players to test us physically.

Maybe it was that, maybe it was our own tactical muddle after the injuries, or maybe it was simply that we’d been pressing so hard in the first half that we ran out of steam; whatever the reason, Sunderland went on to score again, and we lost all momentum.

In the end, I think that 3-1 flattered them. They scored from pretty much every chance they had. If we’d converted half of ours, we would have beaten them 5-3!

Still, they are top of the table for a reason, and I can’t really complain.