TRon

If he was feeling up for it and playing well, it's understandable he wouldn't want to come off after an hour.

He had a decent game, seems to be looking more like the Willock of old.

Feels like we've spent big money on players who haven't improved the side. At least Thiaw and Woltemade look like decent investments so I guess you can't win them all.

At least with Wissa back we don't need to be so reliant on him, he's got us through a third of the season so done a great job for us.

Not sure how I feel about losing the second half 1-0 against 10 men.

Keep hearing about his superior technique but I've not seen any of that on the pitch so far. Just looks someone who can buzz about the pitch without actually doing much with the ball.

Well at least we won. Just about.

With 10 men.

Should be on at 60, he's played two games and been training for a while now. 30 mins would hardly kill him.

Should definitely take Wolt off if we want to use him midweek. Can put Gordon up front if we don't want to give Wiss a full half.

Perfect scenario to give him a nice 30 min run out and get his eye in.

Toon winning 2-0 mackems losing 0-2 Life doesn't get much better.

I am really happy to see us rotating aggressively so I agree this is the game to rest Hall, just hope we get an early goal so it won't matter.

Other than that, I really like those changes. Elanga and Ramsey starting plus Willock in midfield means we should have plenty of pace. Might struggle if they have a low block with that team though.

I did wonder about that a few days ago in this thread. Obviously he's not going to be ready to start, but a stint from the bench for 10-20 mins should be fine, and Burnley is the perfect opportunity to get him out there.

I haven't seen it but I thought I saw a Keith Downie video flash up on my feed that he might be in the squad tomorrow.

Just batter the fuck out of them until the walls are nothing but rubble.

Not sure if that's tongue in cheek, but whatever we might think of the SoS, one of the benefits of moving a stadium away from the city centre is that I would think there'd be far less obstacles to ongoing development as and when needed. If they did need to expand, would probably be a far easier process than ours.

Go for it Davey lad.

Sunderland are a very pragmatic side, they will make it a hard game to play football. Burnley are led by Scott Parker, last I heard he was a football purist, and that's usually a recipe for being a relegation candidate for newly promoted sides in the PL. These are exactly the sort of games we should be confident of winning. There's no way they should be able to go toe to toe with us and outplay us. We should be all over them and rattle in at least 2 or 3.

Hopefully if we do sell him there'll be a sell on clause, unlike what happend with Elliott Anderson.

I've not seen much evidence of his ability to open up teams so far. He looks like he can get into space so maybe we could get goals from him hopefully, but he hasn't shown much ability to go past players yet.

As long as we go there understanding they are flying high because they are a well drilled unit, then I think we get a result. All this talk about them being lucky or in a false position won't do us any favours at all. They might not have our finesse, but they are athletic and will battle for every minute. We will need to match that across the pitch, then take our chances when they come.