Alex Neil admits it felt like 'back to the drawing board' for him after Sunderland laboured to victory against Fleetwood Town. The Black Cats trailed at the break after an abysmal first half, with Neil making a double substitution and changing shape for the second half - a move he admitted he considered making before half-time.
It was a gamble he acknowledged could have backfired, but instead goals from Elliot Embleton, sub Luke O'Nien, and Jack Clarke turned the game around against a Fleetwood side that played the final few minutes with ten men after Zak Jules was sent off for a second bookable offence. The win lifted Sunderland back into the play-off places and up to fifth in the table, but while Neil was pleased his team found a way to win, he says he took little satisfaction given the performance.
"It feels like back to drawing board for me after that," said Neil. "I don't want to put a dampener on a win, but I'm not taking massive satisfaction from that at all to be honest.
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"I've been saying over the last few weeks, what we have to do is separate performances from results. The result was excellent; the performance was extremely poor.
"There's no hiding away from that, the lads know it, we all know the standards we want to set and we fell well short of them in the game, however what we had to do was find a way in the second half to win the match and teams that get promoted and challenge for titles don't play well every week, but they find a way of winning the game and fortunately for us we managed to do that. What I had to do at half time was - and I'll be honest, I didn't even talk to the players about the first half, I just told them to forget it - I said this is how we fix it and I changed the shape.
"It allowed us to go 3-5-2 play with wingers or wingbacks but not to play up against their full-backs which meant they had to come searching for us, and that left space in behind for our front two. We had to move the ball quicker and commit more men forward, and defend one-for-one which is a high risk strategy which was either going to work and win us the game or it was going to not work and we would get beaten by more than one goal and then there would have been a hell of a lot of noise at the end.
"In the first 45 minutes they didn't reach anywhere near our standards, but me ranting and raving at half-time doesn't change that. What I need to do is try and be calm and make decisions.
"I was really tempted to change it before half-time and normally I probably would have, but the difficulty I have with this group of players is that it was a tactical structure thing that I needed to change and we haven't really worked long enough together for them to understand it without me getting them together as a group, so I had to wait until half-time."
Sunderland were desperate for a win to reinvigorate their play-off challenge, and Neil says that meant he had to take a risk. He said: "What I've always done wherever I've been is say that I will risk losing a game to try and win it. I do believe with the group that we've got that it will fall in our favour more often than not.
"We went for it because we are at a stage of the season where we understand the dynamics and what we need to do. It's not always going to work, but thankfully tonight it did.
"Everybody can look at it with hindsight and say 'that was a cr*p decision', but I have to have foresight and see what is going to happen. That's the job of a manager.
"If you get it right, you might get a little bit of praise but if you get it wrong you'll get a lot of criticism - that comes with the job." Nathan Broadhead made his comeback from the hamstring injury that had sidelined him since Christmas in Saturday's draw at Charlton, but he was not involved against Fleetwood with Neil revealing the on-loan Everton man was a slight injury concern and he could not afford to take any chances with him.
He said: "I wouldn't have rested Broadhead, I would have played him if he was fit. He felt a bit of stiffness in his hamstring and he has been out for a long time, so that's a concern for us.
"I think he should hopefully be OK over the next couple of days but what I couldn't do is risk him for one [game] and lose him for eight. We just made the best decision in the interest of the lad."
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