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Sunderland are disunited and that is the difference this season, says Fabio Borini
Mounting tensions within the dressing room and a squad less united than in previous relegation battles have been significant factors in Sunderland’s increasingly unlikely attempts to add to their collection of great escapes, Fabio Borini has admitted.
A battling point where the Premier League’s bottom club twice came from behind perhaps could have provided a launchpad for the kind of unlikely spring resurrection that the Wearside club has improbably produced for the past four seasons. Instead, with his side nine points adrift of safety, manager David Moyes was left to field questions over the extent to which his relationship with Borini and fellow goalscorer Wahbi Khazri has been fractured over the past months, in addition to expressing his begrudging sympathy with sections of support who pointedly jeered the Scot each time he ventured from the dugout.
Borini, a veteran of two successful Sunderland relegation battles, said: “It’s harder than the previous times. We’ve not been at our level and we’ve probably not been as united as a group as in previous seasons. That’s what has been the problem. There have been a few problems within the dressing room, but that’s for us to deal with.”
The Italian has been an increasingly peripheral figure, which perhaps explained the substitute’s 50-yard sprint and provocative knee slide towards his manager after thrashing home a late leveller.
“I don’t care how we celebrate, as long as we score,” Moyes said. It was only Borini’s second goal in 20 appearances, 16 of those starts. The forward added: “Do I have a point to prove? No.”
Many would disagree. He added: “We survived last season with three up front – me, Wahbi and Jermain Defoe – and three of us did well again today when we came together.”
Khazri was not so inflammatory in his celebration after scoring direct from a corner to end Sunderland’s 701-minute goal drought. The Tunisian did not need to. With only one more start for club than country this season before his recall to the line-up after a five-month absence, supporters were quick to question vociferously Moyes’s banishing of the 26-year-old .
“I can only judge on what I see,” the manager explained. “He’s not kept the ball well enough for us [previously].”
There are suggestions Khazri is not from the Roy Keane school of treating every training session as a matter of life or death. “It was nice to have Wahbi out there with us,” midfielder Lee Cattermole said. “He’s worked really hard and, without taking it the wrong way, it shows it doesn’t matter what he looks like. I carry a bit [of weight] as well. He hasn’t played, and he’s going to get fitter.”
Cattermole is on to his seventh permanent manager inside eight years on Wearside, so is well placed to gauge Moyes’s popularity with supporters. He added: “I don’t think they’ve turned against the manager, not the way I’ve seen other managers being treated. Which fans are happy? Which players and managers here are happy? No one is happy here at the minute because of the position we’re in, but we’re working as hard as we can to try to get out of it.”
Dimitar Berbatov, the veteran former Manchester United forward, revealed he was approached this season to join the latest rearguard action at Sunderland, but, despite him being keen to return to the Premier League, a move failed to materialise.
West Ham lost Sam Byram to a late sending off after André Ayew and James Collins had put them ahead at the outset of each half, only to be denied the victory that would have sealed their place in the Premier League next season. Slaven Bilic defended Darren Randolph after the keeper was at fault for both Sunderland goals.
Whether the club’s board show similar loyalty to the manager this summer remains unclear. “I’ve always been relaxed with my situation,” Bilic added. “I have a contract which has another year to run, so it doesn’t bother me.”