OTD: SUNDERLAND 4-0 STOKE CITY
On this day in 2011, three goals in the first 30 minutes and a second half Sebastian Larsson free kick earned us our first win of the season.
Steve Bruce had been doing quite a good job at Sunderland prior to the 2011/12 campaign and had taken the club from being one that was fighting relegation to a comfortable mid table side, as we finished 13th and 10th in his full two seasons as opposed to 15th and 16th in the two years prior.
Cracks were perhaps beginning to show though as we could only muster three wins from 14 Premier League matches at the end of the 2010/11 season, although all three of those wins had come in the last five matches.
Bruce didn’t do himself any favours as we started 2011/12 campaign rather poorly, failing to win any of our first four league matches, losing to Newcastle United at home along the way and also being dumped out of the League Cup by Championship Brighton and Hove Albion. There was a really nice goal by Larsson at Anfield to see us come away with a point though in our first match, as a positive.
Stoke meanwhile were flying high, they’d won all four of their Europa League fixtures against Hajduk Split and Thun to qualify for the main tournament, after losing out in the FA Cup final to Manchester City to conclude their last campaign, and had just come away with a well-fought point in Ukraine against Dynamo Kyiv three days before this game to kick off the grousp stage. In the League Cup they’d knocked out Tottenham Hotspur on penalties and had won two and drawn two of their first four Premier League fixtures. Going off of form alone would lead to the entirely sensible conclusion that a point would be a good result for Sunderland and that Tony Pulis’ side would be much more likely to win. Tired legs due to fixture congestion may have played a role in what was about to transpire then.
Getting off to a good start is what’s needed when you’re facing a confident opposition and that’s exactly what we did as a Sebastian Larsson corner resulted in Titus Bramble scoring in the fifth minute, in part due to an Asmir Begoviç error.
Larsson created the next one as well when we doubled our advantage six minutes later. He sent a cross into the box, intending to find Nicklas Bendtner, but it was intercepted by Jonathan Woodgate. Unfortunately for Woodgate, this resulted in an own goal.
Bendtner then played Craig Gardner in on goal just before the half hour mark and his effort deflected off of Ryan Shawcross and over the goalkeeper to give us a totally unexpected commanding 3-0 lead at half time.
Less than fifteen minutes after the restart, Stephane Sessegnon won a free kick for us and Larsson took it and found the back of the net to make it four.
In an odd turn of events, this would be our biggest win of the season despite Bruce being given his marching orders in November for continued atrocious form and us being a lot stronger under his successor, Martin O’Neill. We ended up finishing 13th and narrowly missing out on a trip to Wembley for an FA Cup semi final, losing out in a sixth round replay to Everton. Stoke also
