Aji Alese hails Sunderland 'fight, resilience, and attacking presence'

Sunderland showed a little of everything a team could want in a fine week at Reading at Watford, according to Aji Alese.

Aji Alese says Sunderland proved their character at Watford after he starred in the battling 2-2 draw at Vicarage Road.

The divisions separated the clubs last season, while Alese himself was playing under-23s football with West Ham.

However, despite the Hornets twice taking the lead in the game, Sunderland were able to bounce back twice to take a point and many – including Alese – thinks they were unfortunate not to win all three.

“[It was an] entertaining game overall,” Alese said. “Maybe we conceded a few too many chances at times but once we went 1-0 down and 2-1 down we showed a great resilience to get back into the game.

“We created chances, Clarkey scored (although it was offside and rightly ruled out), I remember Leon [Dajaku] had a chance so overall we showed good resilience and fight to get back in the game.

“A lot of teams could’ve gone 2-1 down, seen that we had not too much of the ball, seen that they were playing well and said ‘maybe it’s not our day, we’ll take the 2-1 loss and go back home and get ready for the next game’

“But we got on some fresh legs and created lots of chances and on another day we could have won the game so it just shows how we are as a team, the fight we have, the resilience we have, and attacking presence we bring.”

The game was even sweeter for Aji Alese with him scoring his first ever senior goal. He had to wait for it, though, with it initially appearing to have been cleared off the line before it was awarded by goal line technology.

Alese, though, says he never had any doubts that it was in.

“As soon as I hit it I knew it was in, but obviously you have to wait for the ref or the lino to give the signal. As soon as I heard the whistle and saw him point to his watch I knew to turn around and celebrate.

“It was amazing. I’ve scored before at 23’s games and I get a goal here and there in training but it’s a different feeling when you’re scoring when you’ve got our fans in the away end screaming.”