Sunderland 0 Queen's Park Rangers 0: Redknapp starts with stalemate at Sunderland

 
New QPR manager Harry Redknapp gestures from the touchline during last night’s 0-0 draw at the Stadium of Light
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Martin Hardy27 November 2012

“Keep them in there!”. There were hand gestures to point to the corner of the pitch. “In there!” near the Sunderland goal, shouted Harry Redknapp.

The fourth minute of injury time had just started. Harry Redknapp was back as a football manager.

He had walked down the tunnel with Martin O’Neill before the game started, hands tucked in his pockets. and almost slipped unnoticed into the dugout, beside the Queen’s Park Rangers back-room staff; his new home, his fifth with a Premier League club. It is surely his last.

He looked distanced then. But it was a front. A front that fell as his new team showed they might give him a final hurrah, that he might be able to lift a club marooned at the foot of the table.

The moral victory was his. Djibril Cissé was the game’s most dangerous player. The jeers were for the home side, when the referee Andre Mariner finally blew his whistle. The 375 travelling supporters from London, tucked away high in the North Stand, up in the gods, believing their owners may have done something right, just in time.

The significance of the match to both managers could not be underestimated. For O’Neill these are unexpectedly troubled times. On Saturday night, a stray tweet about an unconfirmed resignation had sparked a series of emphatic denials.

The narrative hidden inside the fight to justify the airing of such speculation was the level of surprise if it was true. O’Neill resigning last season would have been unthinkable. Following defeat to West Bromwich Albion at the weekend, that notion was not quite so difficult to swallow. It was, eventually, rubbished but Sunderland’s run before last night was five wins from their previous 27 Premier League games, the prolonged struggle providing the identical win count that led to Steve Bruce’s sacking.

O’Neill (below) admitted that he had been in conversation with the sunderland owner Ellis Short after the exaggerated rumours of his demise had began. Perhaps tellingly, for Short does not give much away, was the desire for stability.

Sunderland have had a revolving door leading to the Stadium of Light since Roy Keane’s tempestuous tenure ended. They need a period where the playing staff is changed over a lengthy period of time.

Patience, however, understandably struggles in such runs. There is little scope within O’Neill’s squad for major change. Sunderland rely hugely on Steven Fletcher for goals. Stéphane Sessègnon, Adam Johnson and Craig Gardner were partnered nearer to him last night, at least at kick-off, but that formation had changed by half-time.

That the game’s most dangerous player to that point used to play for Sunderland did not help the growing impotency of the home side.

Cissé is a handful, and he again proved that. Redknapp’s private assessment of the task facing him as manager will surely have included a nod towards the fact he has a central striker who has done it at this level. Goalscorers like that keep teams up. They keep managers in jobs. Cissé was a goalscorer when at Sunderland and he enjoyed the return back to the North-east. The centre of Sunderland’s defence, due to injury to Wes Brown and John O’Shea, consisted of a free transfer from Aston Villa (Carlos Cuellar) and another who almost joined Sheffield United last season (Matthew Kilgallon). It is worth remembering that Sunderland did not spend as much as their visitors in the transfer market in the summer either. At times it showed.

Opportunities kept coming for Cissé. In the fourth minute his far-post header was tame. In the 12th minute he drew a save from Simon Mignolet with a curling shot. That drew a form of emotion from Redknapp, the new man in charge leaning forward with increasing expectation. It was an emotion shared by many of the 36,000 crowd for periods.

Much is made of confidence and the draining effect on performance when it goes. Both teams are in a struggle, and it showed. O’Neill’s players want to do more, but they lack elements of belief. There were often half-chances, though their cause was not helped by the early substitution of their captain, Lee Cattermole, who thundered into a challenge in the third minute and then limped off three minutes later.

Adam Johnson’s return to the North east has not yet gone as planned. In the 18th minute his link up with Fletcher for once worked, the through ball was clever and found its target and the £12 million Scotland international, fired at Julio Cesar on a slight angle. Robert Green, on for Cesar at half-time, was similarly called on to do well in the 65th minute when a Seb Larsson corner found Fletcher and his header looked goal bound until Green stuck a hand out to his left. The reaction from O’Neill was telling, jumping too early in his technical area. Sunderland are running out of ideas.

By then Redknapp was officially back as a manager.

Kieron Dyer did not travel to the north east yesterday but there was still the former Manchester United midfielder Park Ji-Sung and the winger Shaun Wright Phillips to throw on, and the latter, with two minutes remaining, went through on goal to drill his shot straight at Mignolet.

Cries of “attack, attack, attack” came from the frustrated home supporters at that point. They were not talking to Wright-Phillips, or Cissé. That is never a good sign.

Man of match Mbia.

Match rating 6/10.

Referee A Marriner (West Midlands).

Attendance 36,513.

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