Johnson tries to keep faith

Sunderland 1 Tottenham 2

Predictably defiant words but ones which put him in danger of contradicting his own manager, who seemed on the verge of doing just that.

“For everybody who is writing us off at the moment,” Johnson said after Poyet’s side failed to build on the midfielder’s gift from Tottenham goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, “we have a lot more winnable games coming up than we’ve had in the last few weeks. We must look at the positives.”

Poyet normally does just that but, by his usually ebullient standards, the South American cut a dejected post-match figure.

It was left to Johnson to tow the party line and utter the positive platitudes, while the head coach preferred to keep it real, on the evidence of an 11th defeat in 15 games, the more sensible approach.

“Hopefully we’ll get a good result next week and with a couple of results over Christmas we can pick up,” Johnson said. “It’s not about what the table looks like now. The time to judge is at the end of the season.”

The head coach painted a bleak picture of Sunderland’s survival hopes. The Uruguayan stopped short of describing forthcoming games against West Ham, Norwich City and Cardiff City as must win, but only just.

“On that strength of performance, we would not get enough points to stay up,” he admitted.

“Playing that way doesn’t save you. All the teams who have played like that in the last 10 years have gone down.

“We need three or four wins quickly, there’s no other option. If we don’t, it’s going to become practically impossible.”

Johnson capitalised on some woeful goalkeeping from Lloris to put Sunderland ahead, but they were lax defensively as Paulinho equalised, and equally culpable when John O’Shea was responsible for the fifth own goal they have scored this season.

Jermain Defoe hit the woodwork twice, and although Sunderland might have had a late penalty when Sandro handled, Poyet admitted: “We could have lost 5-1.”

Defoe said two away wins on the spin since the 6-0 hammering at Manchester City proved the spirit at Tottenham was unscathed.

“People asked questions, and we’ve answered them in the last two games. As a squad, we’ve shown a great togetherness and kept our heads.”

SUNDERLAND (4-4-2): Mannone 5; Celustka 6 (Giaccherini 78, 4), O’Shea 3, Brown 5, Bardsley 4; Larsson 5, Ki 4, Colback 3 (Cattermole 68, 5), Johnson 5 (Borini 68, 3); Altidore 4, Fletcher 4.

TOTTENHAM (4-2-3-1): Lloris 5; Walker 6, Capoue 6, Dawson 6, Naughton 6; Paulinho 7, Dembele 7 (sub: Sandro 73, 5); Lennon 6, Holtby 7 (Townsend 79, 5), Chadli 7 (Sigurdsson 84, 6); Defoe 6.

Referee: Lee Mason 5.