Alex Neil knows he has a lot of work to do at Sunderland

Posted Sunday, February 13, 2022 by PA

Alex Neil insists Sunderland cannot afford to drop more points in the League One promotion race after his first game in charge ended in a 1-1 draw at AFC Wimbledon.

Alex Pritchard rescued a point for the Black Cats with a second-half free-kick and cancelled out Luke McCormick’s first-half penalty.

Neil was only appointed as head coach on Friday but saw Sunderland’s winless run extend to four games in southwest London.

Sunderland are in the play-off places, four points off second-placed Wigan having played four games more, and Neil says he saw flashes of promise.

“There were moments there, but not enough moments for us. I think that’s the difficulty. I’ve obviously come in, and the team is off the back of losing three games on the trot,” he said.

“This is a platform in terms of the fact that it’s a point, we haven’t lost, but if we want to be in the mix come the end of the season, then we’ve got a lot of work to do.

“I just want to try to get ideas into them, and an understanding of what their roles are in terms of the game. We did 40 minutes yesterday and spoke to them today, but that’s a lot of information.

“I think we had seven players under the age of 22 in that team today. There’s not a lot of experience there at all.

“I think we’ve got a gap between experienced players who have come in, but who have not played any minutes so they’re literally starting from a standing start, and then we’ve got young lads who this is their first year, and who I think a lot of them look tired.

“Ultimately, we haven’t got a great deal of selection options just now in terms of changing it up though.

“That’s something I’ll need to sit down and have a good look at this week in terms of getting that balance right between lads who are fit and ready to play, and also trying to get minutes into the experienced players because a lot of them are key players if we can get them going.

“The difficulty I’ve got now is that I’ve got really limited games to do that.”

The Dons moved out of the relegation zone, one point above safety, and manager Mark Robinson hailed his team’s display.

“I was really impressed with the performance and the way the lads played. I think if there was anything that was lacking, it was maybe just a little bit of quality when we got to the final third,” he said.

“Sometimes, that final ball just wasn’t quite there, but apart from that, I thought that the performance levels were really high. With that in mind, we’re disappointed that we didn’t take all three points.

“We were happy with them when they’d come in after the first half, and we just asked for more of the same in the second half, and I think we got that.

“You don’t want to make them anxious, that’s a big thing. Because of the position we’re in, you don’t want to make the players feel anxious when they’re playing. We haven’t won for a while, so you don’t want people to be snatching at opportunities.

“You want them to relax. You want them to keep doing the same things, but then feel relaxed when they’re in front of goal.”