{"id":617667,"date":"2022-09-06T14:39:14","date_gmt":"2022-09-06T18:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=617667"},"modified":"2022-09-06T14:39:14","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T18:39:14","slug":"sunderlands-ross-stewart-misses-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2022\/09\/06\/sunderlands-ross-stewart-misses-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunderland\u2019s Ross Stewart Misses Game and It Amplifies His Importance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">Sunderland\u2019s Ross Stewart missed the recent game at Middlesbrough following an injury sustained during the warm-up. Without their main striker and top scorer, the Black Cats struggled, especially in the final third with Ellis Simms unable to trouble Boro&#8217;s central defenders.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Sunderland\u2019s performance without the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2022\/03\/22\/sunderland-striker-ross-stewart-deserves-scotland\/\" target=\"_self\">Scotland<\/a> international showed how reliable they are on their main man and their formation which includes playing two strikers. <\/span><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Sunderland\u2019s Ross Stewart a Big Miss When Unavailable<\/span><\/h2>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\ud83d\ude91 An injury update from the Sunderland boss<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SAFC?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#SAFC<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/hgWGe75YzB\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/hgWGe75YzB<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Sunderland Echo SAFC (@sunechosafc) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sunechosafc\/status\/1567079888015720449?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">September 6, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Injury Update<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Following the game, head coach <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2022\/08\/29\/the-vacant-sunderland-managers-job\/\" target=\"_self\">Tony Mowbray<\/a> gave an update on his striker. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sunderlandecho.com\/sport\/football\/sunderland-afc\/sunderland-afc-injury-news-the-latest-on-ross-stewart-dennis-cirkin-niall-huggins-and-dan-ballard-pre-millwall-3832607\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">He said<\/a>: &#8220;He was shooting in the warm-up, he&#8217;s popped a muscle in his thigh.<\/p>\n<div class=\"Markup__ParagraphWrapper-sc-13q6ywe-0 czRgAf markup\">\n<p>&#8220;It seems a very isolated spot so whether it&#8217;s a tear in the upper thigh where he&#8217;s struck the ball&#8230; I can&#8217;t tell you any more at the moment, it needs a scan. It&#8217;ll either come back grade one, two or three and it&#8217;s two weeks, four weeks or eight weeks. We&#8217;ll just have to wait and see.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h3 class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Pressing Forward<\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">If you have seen <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2022\/09\/05\/sunderland-weekly-round-up-4\/\" target=\"_self\">Sunderland<\/a> this season you will be aware that they like to press the opposition at the first available opportunity. This usually commences after the opposing goalkeeper plays the increasingly common short goal kick or throw. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Ross Stewart is the main man to begin the pressing and quickly his teammates follow suit to put their opponents under increasing pressure with the hope of winning the ball back quickly. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Without Stewart, the Black Cats did not have the intense pressing from their striker and it showed with Middlesbrough being allowed too much time on the ball. <\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Goals and Forward Runs<\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Stewart is Sunderland\u2019s top scorer at present this season with five goals. His 24 league goals last season played a major part in helping the Black Cats achieve promotion. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">His running off the ball has also played a major role in how the team attack. Always on the move, he will make himself available for short passes or more direct ones for him to chase. His teammates now know the type of runs he will make; however, without him, there was little in the way of an outlet when Sunderland did get on the ball.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Tony Mowbray Must Find a Solution <\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Sunderland failed to sign a striker before the transfer window closed. With just two first-team forwards in Stewart and Ellis Simms at the club and their preference of playing with two strikers, failing to recruit another could prove a major mistake.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Should Stewart be out for the foreseeable future, Mowbray must find a solution. Reverting to a lone striker is his main option; however, this failed to work at Middlesbrough. The team were given very little notice of the change in formation therefore another try is the most likely outcome.<\/p>\n<p>Should the Scot be out long term then other options are available. The free transfer market, use a current first-teamer as a striker or promote a player from the academy. Youngster Max Thompson has been performing well for the Under-21s scoring 5 goals in his last two games. A place on the substitutes bench could be in Thompson&#8217;s future sooner than he imagined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunderland&#8217;s Ross Stewart picked up an injury during the warm-up of their recent game. His absence showed how important he is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":617670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,33,22],"tags":[7891],"class_list":["post-617667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-league-football","category-championship","category-sunderland","tag-ross-stewart"],"modified_by":"Barry Dixon, LWOF Site Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}