Why Jobe Bellingham had a new position for Sunderland - #onthewhistle - video Dailymotion

Phil Smith discusses a change of role for Sunderland midfielder Jobe Bellingham in his regular Q&A with Sunderland Echo Readers

Transcript

00:00can take a lot of positives from looking ahead to what seems very likely to be a playoff campaign.

00:06A couple of you asked about this, which I also asked the manager about after. So Tommy says,

00:10did RLB discuss the change in midfield? Why did Job sit in possession and not Dan yesterday?

00:15Michael also says, very experienced performance in a tricky fixture that I suspect earlier in

00:19the season when you drop points and the momentum keeps ticking along. I noticed that Job has been

00:24playing in the slightly deeper of the midfield at three. Any insights into this from Reggie?

00:29Yes, I asked Lebris about that. Bellingham obviously played very much as his deepest

00:32line midfielder, Dan Neal slightly further ahead. Lebris said there was two reasons for it. One is

00:39that he feels that both players have had a really draining season, a huge workload. We all know how

00:44much minutes they've played and he just thinks it's a way of freshening things up for them in

00:48the last bit of the season, give them a different challenge. Like I say, just add a little bit of

00:52freshness. And the second of it was he basically just wants to look at it more. I think you might

00:55remember that when Dan Neal was suspended, Job played as the deepest line midfielder against

00:59Portsmouth earlier in the season and he was excellent in that game. I think Lebris just

01:03feels that he can trust those players, basically whatever position he puts them in, and he just

01:08wants to have a look at a few new options ahead of the playoffs. I think he feels he can do that

01:11certainly with those players without really damaging the structure of the team. And it's not

01:15a particularly big risk to do that. And I think that's really sensible. I think we might see

01:19little bits and bobs of that more between now and the end of the season, just making small tweaks,

01:23just to see if there's some new options that can be had ahead of the playoffs. I think that's the

01:27luxury of position that some of them have got themselves in, where they're so far ahead of

01:30teams like Middlesbrough, Coventry, Bristol City, West Brom, where every game now for them is going

01:34to be a cup final. Clearly every game is important for Sunderland, but they do have that little bit

01:38more scope to rotate a little bit and make some maybe little tweaks. So yeah, hopefully that