Sunderland 0-0 Chelsea: Five reasons why the Blues drew a blank at the Stadium of Light

Sunderland became the first team this season to stop Chelsea from scoring and earned a valuable point on Saturday Night Football.

So how did Gus Poyet's men - who were smashed 8-0 by Southampton last month - shut out the Premier League's top scorers and become only the fifth team in all competitions this term to hold Chelsea to a draw? Here are five reasons...

Lee Cattermole's man-of-the-match performance 

“Lee doesn’t get the recognition, nationally, he deserves,” Sunderland boss Poyet told Sky Sports after the game. With more performances like this, that will soon change.

We wanted to leave them in front of us and not let them play one-twos around us. We frustrated them.

The Black Cats’ defensive midfielder has been sent off five times in the past five seasons, but against Chelsea he was able to snuff out the Blues’ attacks without incurring the wrath of referee Kevin Friend.

He made the joint-most number of tackles (seven) without making a single foul, while his eight recoveries (joint-second-most for outfield players in the game), three clearances and two blocks were testament to his body-on-the-line commitment and proved invaluable to his team-mates in defence behind him.

“The role in front of the back four is a very important one for us,” explained Poyet. “He needs to know when there’s danger, when he can tackle, when he can press, be close to the defenders and must read the game in a certain way. Lee’s enjoying it and he’s the player who has improved the most with me at Sunderland. We have a great understanding and he does that role to perfection.”

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Sunderland’s spot-on gameplan

Cattermole was central to Sunderland’s tactics to restrict Chelsea’s ability to penetrate their defensive lines, and the midfielder explained after the game how the hosts had set out to limit their visitors – who had scored in all 19 of their matches this season, before Saturday.

“We worked hard but we had a game plan and we frustrated them,” he said. “We wanted to leave them in front of us and not let them play one-twos around us, and try to keep the ball in front of us. The manager’s instructions worked for us today.”

Chelsea duly dominated possession (67 per cent) but only managed six shots on target, four of which were from outside the box. It seems hard to believe this is the same Sunderland which was ripped apart and drubbed 8-0 by Southampton in October but, as Poyet says, defending has been the team’s prime focus since that humiliation.

“The quantity of work we’ve done in the defensive idea, that we did in the last four or five weeks since that Southampton game, is paying off, so credit to the players,” he said. “They were defending for their lives.”

Chelsea’s lack of width

“Chelsea are going to be disappointed, but they have to be disappointed about their own performance, especially tactically,” said former Blues boss and SNF guest pundit Ruud Gullit.

“Everybody was on the inside, the whole game long, it was exactly what Sunderland wanted. It was easy for Sunderland. Of course they had to make an effort and be disciplined but Chelsea had no width."

Despite finding the central areas congested by Sunderland players, Chelsea’s forwards and midfielders repeatedly tried to break through the middle of their hosts’ defence, while the lack of forward drive from full-backs Cesar Azpilicueta and Branislav Ivanovic was evident in the stats, which showed they created just one chance between them and failed to make - let alone complete - a pass into the box during the 90 minutes.

Poyet said after the game, while laughing: “We tried to be compact and force them wide – but they didn’t [go wide] which helped us a little bit!”

Silencing Costa

With 11 goals from 10 Premier League games this season, Diego Costa was the obvious threat for Sunderland ahead of kick-off. However, the striker was restricted to just two blocked shots during his 76 minutes on the field, such was the brilliant work of John O’Shea and Wes Brown, who marshalled him so well.

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Instead the Spain international could count himself lucky a first-half retaliation to a foul from O’Shea wasn’t considered worthy of a yellow card - or worse - by Kevin Friend, and that an arm to the face of Brown - which did earn him a booking - wasn’t deemed more malicious by the ref.

Redknapp pointed to the role of Cattermole, sitting in front of Costa and cutting out passes into the striker, as key to keeping him quiet – and no doubt Chelsea’s upcoming opponents will consider a similar tactic to silence the frontman Opta rank as the most clinical in the Premier League. 

Chelsea’s tired legs?

Chelsea named the same starting XI for the third time in a row against Sunderland and may have paid the price for asking the same players to take on West Brom, Schalke and Sunderland in a week.

“I felt Chelsea lacked freshness,” said Jamie Redknapp. “But I can’t criticise Jose Mourinho because both Ruud and I agreed at the start of the game it was good to see teams playing that way. I’m sure now he might think, ‘could I have freshened it up with one or two players?’ Hindsight’s a beautiful thing.”

If Mourinho did have regrets, he kept them to himself. “In the last part of the game, with people a bit tired, we gave a bit of space and they had a couple of occasions," he said. "But I have nothing negative to say about my people. One difficult match, one point. We had a lot of the ball, we moved the ball, we didn’t change our football.”