Match report: Sunderland 0-0 Leeds

Régis Le Bris can usually do impassive to perfection but, by the final whistle, even Sunderland’s ultra balanced manager was looking more than a little fed up and frustrated.

His bottom-placed team had probably just about deserved a second Premier League win of the season but instead had to settle for a draw on an afternoon when the hugely disruptive Storm Boelo proved the enemy of good football.

While Daniel Farke will doubtless regard this as a decent point on the road for his steadily improving Leeds, much now hinges on Sunderland’s visit to Coventry on Saturday.

Will Unwin

Post-match reading

Dropping your captain, the man that has held the team together for most of the past five years, is a bold move from a man whose job is on the line. It was very much a make-or-break decision from Michael Carrick to leave out Bruno Fernandes against Bournemouth. It did not work, and Carrick knew the consequences if it failed and will probably pay the price for it, but he should not be alone.

Carrick said the decision to drop Fernandes was purely based on football reasons but criticising his manager after the desperate defeat to Como cannot have helped. Clearly Carrick disagreed with his captain’s comments on the lack of pressing in the Champions League fixture. It was somewhat telling that Lisandro Martínez kept his place despite pointing out the director of football, Jason Wilcox, was a hindrance to the club the previous week.

Fernandes has been a long way from his best this season, with three goals and one assist in the Premier League, all in one game against Ipswich. It would have been justifiable to give someone else an opportunity in the No 10 role, especially when the squad contains far too many of those. But then, no one at United is in form, so keeping an angry Fernandes in position may have made more sense. United have won almost half the Premier League fixtures Fernandes has started since he joined in 2020, and less than a third when he is absent.

Half-time reading

When football’s dignitaries assemble on Monday at the London Palladium for the Ballon d’Or ceremony it will be a far cry from the first awards 70 years ago. That was held in the slightly less glamorous surroundings of Blackpool town hall, where Stanley Matthews was presented with the prize by Gabriel Hanot, the visionary editor of L’Équipe who came up with the idea of crowning the world’s best player every year.

A specially commissioned china plate was also handed over by the town’s mayor before the 41-year-old Matthews, who was famously teetotal, gave a short speech. “He might have had a double carrot juice that day,” says his son, Stanley Matthews Jr, who will attend this year’s awards with his sister, Jean, and her two daughters. “There was no ceremony. ‘Here’s your Ballon d’Or, well done’, sort of thing. But obviously it’s grown over the years, and now it’s a huge event. We’re very excited.”

The switch of venue to England from its usual home in Paris is a mark of respect to the man who became the first active player to receive a knighthood in 1965, a few months before retiring at the age of 50. It also provides an opportunity to recall an astonishing career that began with his local side Stoke in 1932 and made the “Wizard of Dribble” the most famous player on the planet.

“Most teams have one player whose absence makes them worse,” writes Kári Tulinius. “Usually it’s because, like with Enciso at Ipswich, it’s their best player. Without Brobbey, Sunderland are much diminished, but he’s not obviously in a different class. However, with his diligent harrying and intelligent movement, he creates space for his teammates. Even in a poor game he’s a joy to watch.”

His hold-up play reminds me of Mark Hughes at Manchester United. You could throw any old filth at him and he would somehow control it, fight off four defenders and play the right pass.