In front of a capacity crowd at the Stadium of Light, Wilkinson’s new side failed to revive a Hammers side looking for a key win. New Sunderland made six changes for the match, including the return of key player Kevin Phillips, who had been struggling with injuries for over a month.
This was probably one of the main reasons for the team’s struggles in front of goal, where we had only scored four goals in nine games.
Unfortunately for the home crowd, things did not improve in this match with Trevor Sinclair scoring the only goal of the game after just twenty five minutes. Desperate to make a good impression on his new supporters, Wilkinson brought on David Bellion as an extra striker in the first half in the hope of finding an equaliser, the closest being a Niall Quinn header and a Bellion chance. In the end, Sunderland only increased the pressure and West Ham went on to claim a big win that lifted them from the bottom of the table.
For Sunderland and Wilkinson, things looked very bad and the new Sunderland manager admitted that it would take some time to get his new ideas across to his new squad of players.
