McCarthy: fighting spirit can save us

Sunderland 0 Bolton 0

The Black Cats ended their nine-game run of league defeats with a battling draw against Bolton at the Stadium of Light to take their tally for the season to six from 18 games.

That has left them rooted to the foot of the table, but a buoyant

McCarthy is in no mood to accept the fate many onlookers believe inevitably awaits them. “We have stopped that run of ‘Ls’ alongside our name, it’s a clean sheet,” he said. “We were 11 points behind West Brom at the start of play, we are 10 behind them now.

“Everybody has written us off. Sometimes when I come and talk about it, everybody smiles at me and patronises me and goes away and says ‘that’s a load of rubbish’ because they don’t believe me.

“But such is life and if we stop believing we can do it, we might as well not turn up. If anything, what you have seen is a team out there who believe they can and believe they can compete at this level.

“It was a good performance and I’m pleased with them. I didn’t think it was going to be a free-flowing football match, it was a scrap and we have physically matched one of the best teams at that, being tough and resolute.”

Sunderland might even have claimed a first Premiership victory since September 25 and only their second in 27 attempts under McCarthy had Jussi Jaaskelainen not tipped away the impressive Julio Arca’s injury-time effort.

That said, had El-Hadji Diouf not ballooned his shot over the bar from 10 yards after being set up by Gary Speed with 18 minutes remaining, it would have been Bolton heading home with three points.

Wanderers boss Sam Allardyce made six changes to the side which lost 2-0 to Wigan in the Carling Cup quarter-finals in midweek and promised to rotate his squad throughout the holiday period. However, he left Wearside believing he should have been doing so with another win under his belt.

SUNDERLAND: Davis, Hoyte, Breen, Caldwell, Collins, Lawrence, Bassila (Stubbs 81), Whitehead, Arca, Gray (Murphy 69), Stead (Le Tallec 69).

BOLTON: Jaaskelainen, Hunt, N’Gotty, Ben Haim, Gardner, Speed, Giannakopoulos, Djetou (Campo 57), Fadiga (Okocha 81), Vaz Te, Diouf (Borgetti 76).

Ref: M Atkinson (W Yorkshire).