PDC needs time for his revolution

You know, revolutions require time and aren’t painless. That was also for Sunderland new era that started with a defeat. Pajtim Kassami's header was enough to give the away side all three points. With Fulham playing 10 men behind the ball and with their main forward often moving wide open, Di Canio's players wasn’t’ able to find a way to score. The Back Cats looked fit and sharp after the physical boot camp Di Canio installed this summer, and they are built to play from the back, with short passes in a tactical platform new manager created in the way to play a more funny game. On the paper, Sunderland's manager wants his side to deploy a 4-2-4 formation.“When we have the ball, I want us to be 4-2-4 with the wingers, pushing forward to join the attack and the full-backs moving up. We want to attack, we want to entertain and we want to score goals and the players we have brought in will make us much more able to do that,” he told the Echo. And Sunderland did it with both Adam Johnson and Emanuele Giaccherini operating as true attacking wingers but the team was unable to get behind the opposition's back line. They started well, employing a pressing game with both central midfielders Cabral and Seb Larsson chasing their counterpart Steven Sidwell and Derek Boateng while the defensive line was playing high up the pitch. Also, both Cabral and Larsson was good moving alternatively up and down to support the back line in the build from the back and the forwards. The problem was that Sunderland wasn’t able to create clear scoring chances, despite Di Canio’s quote that "there was only one team that tried to play football and create chances. We were in their half for 80 minutes and had some good chances. Only one team set out to win it." Most of the shoots came from distance – 71% as whoscored stats pointed out – but it was just the Czech right-back Ondrej Celustka’s chance to be really dangerous. The powerful Jozy Altidore played well as target man up front but didn’t give his best shooting. Team’s creators Giaccherini and Stéphane Sessègnon was erratic while the only Johnson was in life but inconsistent. Team is looking for a central midfield playmaker and they needs one to pair to Cabral.