3 points is all that matters

I have read and heard many negative feedback about our team's performance last Saturday. I agree it was a terrible first half. The team is not enjoying their football at the moment.

I can think of a few reasons:
1) Gerard is not at his best cos' of his injury. With a fired up and fully fit Gerard, he can only lift the team's level of play higher.
2) Babel, Mascherano and Leiva were absent. With the Olympics final over by this weekend, we will have these 3 key players back for good. That can only be good news for us.
3) Keane and Torres needs more time to get that understanding between them. We simply can't expect Keane to walk right into the team and start banging in goals for fun. It will take time for him to settle. I just hope he scores his first goal sooner rather than later. Get that first goal in and I'm sure it will do him a lot of good in terms of confidence.

Credit must be given to the Black Cats. They have strengthened over the summer break. Furthermore, it's the first game of the season. Everyone was fired up to win it at home. In Rafa's 4 seasons in-charge, we have never started our first game at home. Getting the first win was important. I don't mind even if it was a fluke or own goal. 3 points was all that matters.

I have said this probably more than a hundred times - Consistency. We need to play at the same level week-in and week-out. We need to kill teams off with a certain kind of ruthlessness. We need to start with our strongest 11, wrap things up by half time and start resting key players the last 20mins. Not the other way around! Rafa needs to know his best 11. There is a lot of debate about the pros and cons of Rafa's rotation policy. I don't have a problem with that but I feel Rafa needs to re-think some of his tactical game-plans.

It's still early days. But in order to win the league, we need to start playing better soon. Real soon.....