Sunderland Stats: Extent of Danny Batth's dominance in Birmingham win revealed

Sunderland's win at Birmingham wasn't pretty, Amad Diallo aside, but it certainly showed the value of Danny Batth.

Sunderland signed off for the World Cup break with a 2-1 away win at Birmingham in front of the TV cameras.

Amad Diallo was the star man, creating the first goal before scoring a brilliant second, and he rightly took the plaudits after the game.

However, what did the stats say about the performances of some other Sunderland players, as well as the game itself?

Let’s pick out some key takeaways.

Outshot but not outplayed

A cursory glance at the match stats would leave you thinking that Sunderland pulled off a bit of a smash and grab on Birmingham. That would be a little misleading, though.

There is no doubt that the hosts certainly out-shot Sunderland, and to a significant degree. Birmingham peppered Anthony Patterson’s goal with 22 attempts compared to Sunderland’s six. As we know, though, it’s not quantity of chances that counts, it is the quality of them that matters.

Of those 22 Birmingham efforts, only six (27%) were on target. By comparison, Sunderland were much more efficient with four of their six shots testing John Ruddy in the Birmingham goal.

Fine defensive effort

I often think that defending gets a raw deal in football. When attackers do their job we talk about the quality, yet when defenders do theirs it’s often called ‘spoiling.’

Sunderland’s defenders put in a very impressive effort at St Andrews, though. In total, they made 32 clearances and blocked nine of those 22 Birmingham shots on goal.

That all meant that Patterson was required to make just four saves in the 90 minutes – two of them admittedly very good – so although his goal was peppered with shots, his team ensured that he wasn’t.

Batth the battler

Sunderland’s defensive effort was all the more impressive considering the players they were missing. You could put a back five of Lynden Gooch, Luke O’Nien, Dan Ballard, Aji Alese and Dennis Cirkin and feel pretty good about your chances of winning a game, yet they were all unavailable at St Andrews.

Fortunately, the one who was available, Danny Batth, was an absolute colossus.

More than a third (11) of those 32 clearances I mentioned were made by Batth, eight of them with his head. He also had a third (three) of the nine clearances too and a team leading six recoveries too.

After the match, Birmingham boss John Eustace complained that his team ‘lost too many duels,’ but he was wrong there. They actually won 54% of the ground duels and 60% of the aerial ones. The source of his perception was probably Sunderland winning the key duels, and that was largely down to Batth.

Neil influence growing all the time

In this feature following the Cardiff game, we highlighted how Dan Neil probably had a much better game than many of us, myself included, probably realised. That was largely due to a bad giveaway in the first half which formed the prism through which his performance was viewed.

Of course, with such a brilliant assist for Diallo’s goal, there is a danger that the opposite effect would happen this week. However, it was another fine performance from the 20-year-old.

The midfielder attempted 29 passes and could only complete 66% (19) of them. That’s obviously not great, although there is some context that needs to be applied here. Neil made 10 passes into the final third, more than any other player. It’s easy to play sideways or backwards passes and boast of a high completion rate, but Neil is attempting to be progressive with the ball, and that’s a lot harder – and far more commendable.

He is becoming something of a force without that ball, too. In fact, no Sunderland player averages more successful tackles per 90 minutes this season than Neil, and he maintained that at St Andrews, winning two of his four attempted tackles and four of his nine ground duels.

Hume’s best game for Sunderland

Of all the young players brought to Sunderland under the current transfer model, the one who can probably say he has not had much of a fair chance is Trai Hume.

A veritable defensive crisis with Lynden Gooch injured and Luke O’Nien suspended gave him an opportunity to impress in this one, though, and he certainly took it.

His clearance off the line was the highlight reel part of it, of course, but the stats showed how well Hume did generally.

Hume was especially impressive in the air, winning five of his nine aerial duels, but he also made five clearances during the match. No player had more touches of the ball than Hume, and only Neil got Sunderland into the final third on more occasions than the Northern Irishman.

It wasn’t a spectacular performance by any means, but it was one that demonstrates there is definitely a player in there and one with which it is worth persisting.