Dickman refuses to panic as South Shields suffer Sunderland defeat

South Shields manager Elliott Dickman insisted there were positives for his side to take from their 5-0 home defeat at the hands of Championship neighbours Sunderland.

After a largely positive end to Dickman’s interim spell in charge last season, the former Black Cats academy coach got his permanent reign underway against his old club in front of a sold-out 1st Cloud Arena on Saturday. However, it was the visitors that made the more positive start as they opened the scoring inside the opening three minutes with a goal from Patrick Roberts. Trai Hume doubled the lead before the quarter-hour mark and three goals in ten minutes from Chris Rigg, Eliezer Mayenda and Adil Aouchiche took Sunderland out of sight by the interval.

A youthful Mariners side produced a heartening display during the second 45 minutes and managed to restrict their visitors to few chance despite failing to reduce the arrears. Dickman stressed he would not be getting too carried away with the negatives or positives from the performance and set his sights on getting things right in time for next month’s National League North season opener at Hereford.

He told The Gazette: “I thought Sunderland were excellent in the first-half and you could see the difference between the two sides.  Even though it was five-nil, it can be easy to be critical and it can be easy to pick faults with something of the things.  Don’t get me wrong, there were some things we need to tie down before we go into Hereford in a few weeks time but there were aspects that were good, things we have worked on and moments that were nice.

“That’s the positive side and everyone got 45 minutes into their legs and that’s really important to allow us to have a really good week of training this week.  I thought Sunderland were really good in the first-half and we dug in and kept going, which you can also see as a positive.”

With a crowd of 3,800 inside the 1st Cloud Arena, the meeting with the Black Cats will provide South Shields with a financial boost ahead of the new campaign - and Dickman believes the now annual fixtures brings benefits across all aspects of the club as they look to push for promotion into non-league’s top tier this season.

He said: “We love the Sunderland game as a club.  We get a full house and it’s great for our players, our fans and our staff.  From our side of things, there are a lot of positives.  Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to be getting beat five-nil all of the time in other competitions but our programme indicates we have a really tough pre-season, rather than going out and winning eights and nines, which you can get benefit from, but we will get more benefit from running around and chasing Sunderland.  There’s no panic button, there were a lot of positive things for us as a football club.”