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.”