For only the second time since the early exchanges of the season, Sunderland are out of the bottom three, but the sound of celebration could not be heard at the Stadium of Light. There was a spasm of relief when Fabio Borini, the substitute, plundered a stunning, late goal, but it was balanced by a nagging sense of deflation. In the middle of trying week, a point was not the balm that an embattled club required.
Sunderland are 17th but having grasped the lead against Crystal Palace, who have not won in 11 league games, they reverted to type, giving Sam Allardyce palpitations. Worse, they were propelled there by Connor Wickham, a player whose goals kept them in the Barclays Premier League two years ago.
While Borini’s terrific, first-time shot from a tight angle on the right — “goal of the season,” Allardyce said — eased that despondency, the manager said before the game that “a draw isn’t good enough”. With the club and region on tenterhooks as they await the verdict of Adam Johnson’s trial — he is no longer their player, but fallout will be unavoidable — it made for an uneasy evening.
Allardyce avoided jubilance; he yearns for nothing as much as a clean sheet. “Relief, frustration, panic, heart-rate monitor — it’s about 140 today,” he said. “It’s the trials and tribulations of being down at the bottom, an example of the swings and roundabouts that we’re going to get between now and the end of the season. My disappointment is being in control of the game and not being able to see it through.”
Wickham’s involvement was pivotal and painful. A polarising figure during his four years at Sunderland, he joined Palace for £7 million last August. He has rarely been as incisive as he was in the 61st and 67th minutes, when he first collected a pass from Wilfried Zaha and scored with a curling shot via the right post and then volleyed in from close-range after Mile Jedinak had won the ball from Yohan Cabaye’s corner.
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“Connor will score goals as a No 9. I’ve always thought that,” Alan Pardew, the Palace manager, said. “He’s been a bit unlucky, because in the great spell we had he got injured, then he got suspended and he’s had a fragmented season, but he’s come back and looks sharp and the first goal was terrific, worthy of any Premier league game.”
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For a second, Allardyce bemoaned his “blatant foul” on Yann M’Vila. But Sunderland had their own failings to stew over. They went ahead when Jermain Defoe teed up Dame N’Doye, whose long shot lacked power but took a deflection off Scott Dann, yet they were brittle at the back. “It’s been our Achilles’ heel, both since I’ve been here and before and we’ve still not put it right,” Allardyce said. “That’s the huge, big frustration for me.”
“Overall, it was a game we deserved to win,” Pardew said. Allardyce laughed at that. “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” he said. “When have you ever heard Alan say they didn’t deserve to win? He says they play well when they play badly and that he deserves to win when they don’t. We all know that.” The levity, though, was rationed.