Keane plans training changes

Sunderland 1 Fulham 1

Sunderland boss Roy Keane has admitted he may have to alter his training regime after witnessing a first-half horror show against Fulham.

The Black Cats turned in a spectacularly inept first 45 minutes to belie the manager’s assertion that they can make a significant impact in the top flight.

What transpired before the break made a second-half fightback look perhaps a little more impressive than it was, and while Keane was happy to see his players secure a reward for their efforts, he is well aware that, to a certain extent, that simply papered over the cracks.

In the wake of a frenetic finish, during which Kenwyne Jones’ 86th-minute equaliser set the scene for substitute Anthony Stokes to almost snatch victory in injury-time, the Irishman revealed he had already started to analyse the reasons for a woeful start.

Keane, who has been hampered by injuries from the off this season, said: “We are asking players to keep pushing their bodies.

“That is well and good at Christmas or Easter, but so early in the season, it is something I don’t like doing. As a manager, I have got to ask myself why we were so flat in the first half.

“Possibly we are training too hard, possibly we are pushing the players, and sometimes you can leave it out on the training pitch.

“Credit to our players, they train extremely hard. There is always that intensity, there are always tackles flying about. But then I ask myself why have we got a load of injuries?

“That is down to me as a manager and we have to look at that because in any game in the Premier League, if you start slow, it’s not like a light switch, you cannot just switch it on.

“You have got to start quickly, and it was a long 45 minutes for us. But I am grateful that we got to half-time.”

That the Wearsiders walked off with boos ringing in their ears only 1-0 down was something Fulham boss Lawrie Sanchez was to live to regret after his side dominated the opening 45 minutes.

Simon Davies’ 32nd-minute free-kick did the damage, but the visitors should perhaps already have been in front after the normally lethal David Healy latched on to Danny Higginbotham’s suicidal pass across goal, but contrived to fire wide of the empty net from 20 yards.

Sunderland’s improvement after the restart was marked, although it was not until the 70th minute that they really threatened with keeper Antti Niemi blocking Grant Leadbitter’s shot after the midfielder broke through the cover.

The Finn repeated the feat at the death when confronted one-one-one by Stokes, but by then Jones had climbed highest to power home his fourth goal of the season from a Leadbitter cross to level.

Asked what he had said at half-time, Keane replied with a smile: “Not too much. Half-time came at a good time – I’m not sure for the players, but for me and the staff. It was a chance to make a few points to them, and credit to them, they took it on board.

“It was certainly a game of two halves. They were unrecognisable from the first half.”

The result was all the more creditable after full-back Greg Halford’s second dismissal of the season on 67 minutes for two bookable offences, a misdemeanour which will land him a two-match ban.

But if Halford was disappointed with his afternoon’s work, his mood was more than matched by that of Sanchez, who has now seen his side go nine Barclays Premier League games without a win.

He said: “I see some results going on in the Premier League, I see sixes and sevens and fours and fives and threes.

“We had one bad half against Portsmouth and were beaten 2-0, and that’s our worst game of the season.

“We have been in every other game against top teams from Arsenal all the way down to the Derbys of this world when we played with 10 men.

“We can compete, but what we cannot seem to do at this moment in time is gather three points from one game.

“We have to gather them from three games, which does make it rather difficult. But if we play like that in 90 per cent of our games, barring the last five minutes, we will be okay.”