Norwich City 0-0 Sunderland: James Copley reacts

James delivers his verdict from the Carrow Road press box as Sunderland draw with Norwich City

Transcript

00:00Hello, welcome to Carrow Road where Sunderland have just drawn 0-0 with Norwich City.

00:05A third clean sheet on the spin sees Regis Lebris team into the Championship playoffs.

00:11That's now confirmed. We're going to talk a little bit about the game.

00:14I'm flying solo today. No Phil Smith, but we'll be doing an On The Whistle video tomorrow.

00:18I thought the first half, Sunderland were quite poor. I think Norwich should have arguably been ahead.

00:24Anthony Patterson came up with a couple of good saves. Norwich were a little bit wasteful as well.

00:28I thought, to be honest, that that was Daniel's worst half in a Sunderland shirt for a little while.

00:33Regis Lebris did rotate his squad. We had Eliza Mayenda up front for Wilson Isidore.

00:39Tommy Watson started over on the left-hand side of Milan. Alexic started on the right-hand side.

00:45It did look a little bit just disjointed. Leo Hjelda also started at left-back, which meant Trey Hulme went to right-back.

00:52Alan Brown then went into the middle. A lot of people asking about Joe Bellingham.

00:58We've been told that it's a minor injury, but just a little bit of a precaution.

01:03Hopefully, Regis Lebris will have something more to say about that.

01:07But in the second half, I thought Sunderland did improve. They did come into the game.

01:10They did have a few chances, maybes, to nick it in the end. Mayenda saw a good chance saved.

01:15But Sunderland opted to bring on Wilson Isidore, Enzo Lefay and Patrick Roberts in the second half.

01:23And that sort of bomb squad really, really did help Sunderland get the ball moving.

01:26I thought Enzo Lefay, his cameo, was very, very impressive.

01:29He came on in the middle of the park and he was a joy to watch at times.

01:32I'm really excited to see how Enzo Lefay gets on when he starts to play regular minutes from the start in the centre of midfield for Sunderland.

01:41But yeah, there's not really much more to say about it.

01:44It was a game of two halves in a sense that Sunderland was so poor in the first half.

01:49But in the second half, they really did improve.

01:51Arguably should have nicked it in the end.

01:53I have to say Chris Mepham was absolutely superb.

01:56Sunderland's best player on the night by a distance.

02:00There was a couple of interventions.

02:01One in the second half, just absolute quality.

02:04A couple of really crucial blocks as well.

02:06First and second half.

02:07The first half, he cleared one off the line, which looked like it was going in.

02:11The second half, he took one straight to the head, which could well have flew into the back of the net if it wasn't for Chris Mepham.

02:18So he was absolutely the standout performer today.

02:21Sunderland's best player.

02:22But now Sunderland's playoff position is secured.

02:25They can start to maybe experiment a little bit more towards the end of the season.

02:31But yeah, that's about it from us today.

02:34Please leave your questions for On The Whistle tomorrow.

02:37We'll also have a podcast as well.

02:39And then it's Swansea City at home on Saturday.

02:41My name has been James Copley.

02:42And thank you very much for watching.