2 weeks Ago By James Copley
Digital Journalist Graeme Murty has revealed two of his under-21 players have suffered injuries. Sunderland under-21s lost 3-0 to Borussia Monchengladbach at Eppleton in the Premier League International Cup on Wednesday night with several notable absences. Advertisement Advertisement Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Shields Gazette, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more.
Tommy Watson did not feature for Sunderland in their Premier League International Cup clash with Borussia Monchengladbach with Northern Ireland youth international Rhys Walsh taking his place out on the left flank. Ukrainian forward Timur Tutierov also missed the game alongside usual first-choice defender Ben Crompton with Murty confirming that the duo had picked up injury niggles. “Timur felt something in his groin and Tommy was with the first team,” Murty told The Echo about Sunderland’s absent trio.
“Ben pulled his hamstring against Bilbao. “So we're getting that scanned and we'll have a prognosis for that soon enough but he's around and about somewhere.” The visitors took the lead in the first half after dispatching a penalty given away by Sunderland defender Tom Lavery, who started the game at right-back.
Monchengladbach then doubled their lead two minutes after the interval with a goal from Noah Pesch. Shio Fukuda, who scored the opening penalty, then made it three with 51 minutes played. Advertisement Advertisement Sunderland huffed and puffed as the game wore on but couldn’t find a breakthrough in what was a tough evening for the Wearsiders and the game ended 3-0 to Borussia Mönchengladbach.
“I don't think I should be happy. I'm never going to be happy to lose and I don't think we should be happy with the way that we've lost the game, Murty added after the game. “I think that our opponents didn't have to do enough to win the game 3-0.
“I think that we handed them three goals through our poor play and our poor understanding. But as we said against Bilbao, this is the best kind of competition because you get instant feedback. If you make a mistake, you're going to get punished.
“We need to take a real hard lesson from our opponents in the fact that they punished us, we didn't punish them enough. For all of our good stuff and when we broke their shape apart, we didn't culminate with a goal when we could have done. Advertisement Advertisement “Those opportunities turned into chances turned into goals would really, I think, have swung the momentum of the game.
Our opponents were able to keep us at arm's length for the last 15-20 minutes I think. And we huffed and puffed but didn't really do enough to break them down.” “I don't need any mitigation,” Murty added when asked about the quality of Monchengladbach on the night and their numerous youth internationals.
“I desire a level of intent and a level of character from the players to manifestly deal with the challenge in front of them. And I thought when they did, we more than matched them. “I think in terms of our play and our movement of the ball when it was slicker, we looked like a real threat.
But I think that too often we lost out in critical moments, and I think sometimes through a little bit of naivety, sometimes through a little bit of lack of game understanding, but also I thought sometimes physically we got handled and moved out of the way where I would prefer it to be the other way.” National World encourages reader discussion on our stories. User feedback, insights and back-and-forth exchanges add a rich layer of context to reporting.
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