Well, he won't be welcome in Brøndby any time soon 😅 but seems like a good deal for us. Will be interesting to see if JDT persists with Pears as no1.

Might be a good time to play them as such a poor start against Stoke might have dented their confidence early on. Alternatively it could galvanise them to perform better. I guess we'll see. Last season's result was one of the most humiliating in recent memory - and came fairly soon after our abject surrender to Burnley - so certainly expect a big improvement this time around.

Biggest problem with the RTG forum is that they don't have consistent threads, people just constantly start new ones about the same topic. There must be hundreds of threads about Mowbray alone. Absolute mess.

https://www.s24su.com/forum/threads/there-are-wannabe-itks-trying-to-create-a-toxic-atmosphere-at-the-club.96544/ Looks like we aren't the only club with a sudden ITK influx this summer 🤣

Imagine his comments would have been very different if Sunderland had scored rather than hit the woodwork at the death. According to their forums they haven't kept a clean sheet at home since Feb - I'd be focusing on that rather than added time.

My uneducated guess would be something along those lines - lower league, lower skills, maybe more long balls from the defenders and punts up the pitch from the goalies, leading to the ball bouncing off the pitch more often.

Both Ipswich and Sunderland got caught out messing around like this as well. The Dutch Disease is spreading.

Thoroughly enjoyed that as a neutral. Three major turning points in the match: Bellingham's miss - an absolute sitter, he'll be having nightmares about that tonight. Sunderland score at that point and I think the match has a very different outcome. Ipswich's goal on the stroke of half time - Sunderland looked absolutely demoralised when they came back out for the second half. Whatever Mowbray said did not work. Hume's sending off - weirdly gave Sunderland a new lease of life, the game totally turned in their favour after this. Despite getting a goal back though it wasn't enough. A strange game from an Ipswich perspective. For most of the first half they looked totally out of their depth, but Sunderland's defence was exposed a couple of times on the counter and then punished right at the end of the half. Ipswich were then in control in the second half until the sending off, at which point they lost the momentum, but managed to hold on. Teams will get at Ipswich defensively this season, just going to be a case of how many goals they can score at the other end. For Sunderland it was a classic Mowbray match. Dominating the first half, but unable to score and ended up going in behind. Horrible start to the second half, and even though they had a late flurry it wasn't enough to save them. Their defence was a mess, and attacking wise they were definitely missing Diallo. Think they'll need to strengthen in both areas if they have any hope of repeating last season's tilt at the playoffs.

Happy to see an extra 13 minutes of this match tbh, has been very entertaining.

Yellow card for Mowbray.

2-1... game on.

A well-timed run as well tbf, would have been easy to stray offside but Hirst held his run until the perfect moment. Defending was ridiculously open mind. Huge gaps. Sunderland are going to struggle if this is the best they can do defensively. They should be going back to the negotiation table with Batth ASAP after this performance. I don't think Ipswich have a team capable of top six, but they're well-drilled and should be able to put away some of the more disorganised teams in the division - of which there are usually a fair few.

Sunderland down to ten. An opening day nightmare.

Sunderland with one good half, one horrendous half... where have I seen this before?

https://streamin.me/v/b432ca8d Hirst's goal for anyone curious.

Sunderland all over the place now. Can see this ending 3 or 4-0 at this rate.

Horrific defending again from Sunderland, smart run from hirst though and absolutely buried it.

Sunderland have absolutely collapsed here mentally.

2-0 - George Hirst. Wow. Disaster for Tone.

He's been falling over repeatedly, think the ref got wise to it pretty quick.

1-0 Ipswich... Lol. Sunderland's defence really is poor.

Why do you think so? Nixon has been the only one saying this, but I haven't seen any evidence of it, and no Ipswich fans are anticipating big signings. They had a big budget for League 1, but then so did we.

Seems so, maybe nerves as it was a complete air kick, and he's had the fewest touches in the first 30 minutes or so. Granted Ipswich have spent most of it defending. had a few decent chances though, Sunderland looking dodgy in defence in the rare instances they've been threatened. From what I've read Evans is out until the new year with a long-term injury, so won't be back for some time. Lots of domination from Sunderland but little threat so far. Set pieces been poor, but no surprise there. With that said they should be 1-0 up, that Bellingham miss was a shocker.

Dack and Evans shown on camera watching on. The dream team back together. Evans is injured, unsurprisingly.

And there's the George Hirst we all know so well.