Plenty to work on for Athletic

Reporter: TONY BUGBY
Date online: 27/07/2009

Athletic 1, Sunderland 2

ATHLETIC kick off their new league campaign in less than a fortnight and manager Dave Penney admitted he was left with plenty of food for thought after seeing his side beaten by Sunderland’s kids at Boundary Park on Saturday.

On the evidence of a desperately disappointing display, there is clearly still plenty of work to do to mould the new-look squad into a unit capable of being a force in Coca-Cola League One.

Against Sunderland, Penney was confronted by problems at either end of the pitch with Athletic’s defence fragile and the attack lacking clout.

Penney said: “No matter what we do in training, we cannot give away goals like we did against Sunderland.

“They are shocking goals to concede and, in all my time in management, I don’t think I had seen two worse ones.

“There wasn’t much right with the first half when we looked to hide and we were weak.

“In the second half we were much better and Neal Eardley’s quality got us going.

“We squeezed from the front and everything about what we wanted to do was right whereas it was as wrong as it could be in the first half.”

Perhaps it was just as well that Sunderland’s big stars had bigger fish to fry as they lined up alongside Ajax, Atletico Madrid and Benfica in the Amsterdam Tournament.

Goodness knows what the score might have been had Athletic’s shaky back line faced Premier League stars such as Kenwyne Jones, Kieran Richardson, Steed Malbranque and Carlos Edwards.

The Black Cats sent a reserve/academy team to Boundary Park and left purring after they proved too hot for Athletic.

And it was a measure of just how bad Athletic were that they failed to beat a Sunderland side which at the final whistle had five 16-year-olds on the pitch - evidence of their excellent youth system.

Athletic, who were without the injured Dean Furman, Deane Smalley and Rob Purdie, had newly-signed Rene Steer making his debut at left-back while right-back Andy Holdsworth and striker Keigan Parker, both acquired during the week, also started.

Steer burst through on goal after a neat build-up and took the ball wide of keeper Michal Misiewicz, but was unable to convert.

Athletic were undone by two bizarre goals in the space of four minutes midway through the opening period.

Holdsworth, on the half-way line, played a short pass backwards to Reuben Hazell who slipped, enabling Adam Reed to race clear and round keeper Dean Brill to score easily.

The second was equally bad as Hazell scuffed a sideways pass to Sean Gregan enabling David Dowson to seize on the error to run through on goal to score a gift goal.

It might have got even worse as Hazell and Gregan got into another muddle, but Dowson’s goalbound effort was spectacularly cleared off the line by Joe Jacobson.

Andrew Galer and Robbie Weir also went close and Athletic were lucky only to be 2-0 down at the break.

Penney brought on Eardley and Kelvin Lomax at full-back, pushing Holdsworth into midfield as Steer and Jacobson came off at the break.

Chris Taylor and Parker had decent attempts at goal before Athletic finally made a breakthrough midway through the second period when Sunderland defender Jean Y’ves M’voto needlessly hauled back Parker.

After deliberations involving Eardley, Parker and Abbott it was Abbott who scored from the spot, though he only just managed to squeeze his shot past keeper Misiewicz.

Parker, Taylor, Holdsworth and substitute Chris O’Grady all had chances in the final quarter to make it 2-2, though Sunderland could have won by a wider margin as the dangerous Dowson was denied by an upright.