I watched Sunderland's exciting then frustrating draw with Coventry City and here's four conclusions I drew

Sunderland drew 2-2 with Coventry City at the Stadium of Light on Saturday.

Phil Smith reported live on the game and here are four key conclusions he drew…

A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY GOES BEGGING

Even if there had been frustration with the end result, it wasn’t difficult to take consolation from Sunderland escaping QPR and Preston with a point. They had played half an hour with ten at QPR and at Deepdale they had simply been well short of their best, a poor team performance that probably didn’t warrant the valuable clean sheet and point on the board.

Here, it was hard to take too many positives. This was two points thrown away from a position of complete control.

Coventry City of course remain a strong Championship side, whose underlying performance data has this season been significantly stronger than results suggest. That was one of the main reasons that made their decision to sack Mark Robins in midweek all the more baffling. The performance of Haji Wright, whose speed and movement was a constant menace to Sunderland even in the spells where his team were poor, was a reminder of the quality and investment within the squad. Régis Le Bris said afterwards that he fully expects the Sky Blues to finish closer to the top of the table by the end of the season and in that he is surely right.

This was a golden opportunity for Sunderland all the same. Coventry clearly were knocked by the departure of Robins, and they were facing a host of injury issues. Their two first-choice central midfielders were injured, and their third suspended. Their two first-choice goalkeepers were injured, Brad Collins playing his first minutes of the season while struggling with illness. 

While the draws with QPR and Preston were ones you could argue might look very valuable come the end of the campaign, this felt like two points dropped. Sunderland haven’t beaten Coventry City since 2007 and you have to think it’ll be a tougher task when they meet again later in the campaign. A golden opportunity was missed in this second half.

COVENTRY’S COMEBACK - OR SUNDERLAND’S COLLAPSE?

Was this second-half collapse a story of Coventry City’s resurgence, or of a passive Sunderland side inviting pressure? The truth, as ever, will sit somewhere in between. Sunderland definitely failed to reproduce the intensity with which they played in the first half but Coventry also made a concerted effort to lift their game, pressing higher and getting their centre halves up the pitch. Le Bris’s view after the game was that Sunderland had not looked after the ball well enough in the face of that press, turning it over too easily and thus allowing Coventry to start attacking their box from better areas. 

It was a high-risk approach from Coventry because Sunderland had chances to pick them off on the break, but they threatened more than enough to warrant their point. It was one of the first occasions this season when fans have really put Le Bris’s decisions under the microscope, specifically his decision to change shape and bring on another defender as the momentum of the game flipped. In his defence both Romaine Mundle and Alan Browne picking up injuries in the same sequence of play was always going to disrupt, and his view that Dan Ballard’s aerial prowess would help counter Coventry’s direct play was fair enough. What’s undoubtedly true is that the changes did see Sunderland drop deeper, an issue exacerbated by the fact that Wilson Isidor moving out left then took away from their main outlet and counter-attacking threat. Aaron Connolly looked isolated for much of his cameo from the bench as Sunderland lost control.

Sunderland will go through their usual video analysis this week and there’ll be much for staff and players to reflect on. One thing that should be said is that Sunderland’s defending in a low block this season has often been superb, this was the exception rather than the rule.

LE BRIS IS ABOUT TO FACE HIS BIGGEST TEST YET

The trip to Preston initially looked as if it would be a severe test of Le Bris’s flexibility and tactical acumen, but Chris Rigg’s return to fitness meant the team largely had a familiar look.

Sunderland’s next game most definitely will test Le Bris. He was already facing the absence of Jobe Bellingham, who has clearly been a big miss in the last two fixtures. He will now also be without Patrick Roberts and Trai Hume, who both picked up their fifth yellow cards of the campaign in this game. Though too early to know for sure, there are also obvious doubts over both Browne and Mundle after their injuries.

A change of personnel, shape and approach is now inevitable and Le Bris faces one of the toughest away games of the season with the core of his side hugely disrupted. It’s going to be a fascinating week after the international break, with three difficult fixtures even before you consider all of these absences. It feels as if we will learn a lot about Le Bris and the depth of this squad over the course of those games.

A TOUCH OF PERSPECTIVE

While the overriding feeling after this game was frustration, there were still undoubtedly positives to take away.

Sunderland were superb in the first half, and have shown time and time again that they can sweep teams away on home turf. That’s a huge step forward from recent seasons and can be the bedrock of a promotion push.

The two goals they scored were two of the best in recent memory, and Wilson Isidor is emerging as a genuine gamechanger of an option. At the start of the season if you’d offered fans 31 points from 15 games and a centre forward in fine form, they’d likely have snapped your hand off. Sunderland have an excellent platform, now they need to keep improving to capitalise.