City Gift Sunderland Title

MCFC Reserves 0 - 3 SAFC Reserves

City management decided to play a hotch potch of a team that was filled with players that will be released at the end of the season and so there was little surprise that the most consistent team in the league was able to show it's superiority with a comfortable three nil victory.

Despite an early shot from Adam Clayton the writing was on the wall when the powerful French centre half Jean Yves M'voto had a header from a corner touched onto the crossbar in the fourth minute.

Rather against the run of play City won a penalty just before the half hour mark when Vladimir Weiss showed a brief bit of skill to evade the close attentions of the Sunderland players before going into the penalty area and being impeded through a foul. Weiss decided to take the penalty ahead of usual penalty taker David Ball or even Ian Daly is a penalty taker and Weiss in his infinite wisdom thought that a stuttering run up is a good way to help score a penalty; when in actual fact if you watch the most successful penalty takers, the Germans, when do you see them do this; and so there was no surprise that Weiss missed the opportunity.

Sunderland finally made their superiority tell just before the end of the first half with yet another corner being headed by M'voto at the near post and guiding it well into the far post where Richard Martin made no attempt to save the shot. Which is Richard all over because occasionally he makes some fine saves but mostly he makes basic mistakes and is a real surprise that he is still at City given that Kasper Schmiechel has not gone out on loan and the signing of Gunnar Nielsen who has gone out on loan bizarrely.

Sunderland's goal came when City had won a corner and indeed should have been awarded at least an indirect free kick as Igor Paldan was clearly being man handled; but the ball was cleared and Ben Morris passed the ball to Scott Kay and he made a mess of things and allowed Sunderland's Martyn Waghorn to run down the right and put a cross into the far post where the forward Jack Colback was free to head the ball to score Sunderland's second goal.

Sunderland wrapped things up after a few minutes of sustained pressure where Martin pulled off a couple of good saves but Jamie Chandler had a decent shot that Martin pushed back into the danger area and Jamie did not pass up the chance to score at the second attempt.

City had a couple of consolation efforts right at the death but just did not have the conviction and so Sunderland deservedly won the Premier League reserve north title.

City's final two games in the league are away to Middlesbrough and home to Everton and so hopefully the management see fit to play a team that has showed more quality to end the season with a little bit of respectability.


City: Martin(GK), Kay, Morris, Paldan, Ramsey, Tsiaklis, Weiss, Clayton(Capt.), D Ball, Daly(Cieslewicz 75), Moore.

Subs: E Johansen(GK), Frater, Grandison, Paris.


Sunderland: Colgan(GK), Kay, Hartley(Brown 46), Meyler, M'voto, Nosworthy(Capt.), Weir(Madden 81), Chandler, Waghorn, Colback, Cook(Noble 81).

Subs: Carson(GK), Adams.

Att: 131.