'Benidorm Man City' - Marco's assessment of Sunderland v Millwall
Sunderland legend Marco Gabbiadini described the Black Cats as a 'Benidorm Man City' after their loss against Millwall at the weekend.
As a pundit on BBC Radio Newcastle's Total Sport, the former striker responded to a text criticising the Club's coaching staff: "Sometimes formations, I don't particularly care too much. This is a modern thing where coaches blow their own trumpet about.
"It's more about your attitude, your application to the game and Sunderland's problem on Saturday was that, one of the basic things you were taught when I was a young player was, if there was space in front of you, you ran into it.
"You ran into that space and you took that space from the opposition. So, if you picked the ball up on the halfway line and there was nobody in front of you, you travelled that 15 yards, as much as you could, as quick as you could, so then it caused the problems.
"Then they had to, someone either had to shuffle across the midfield or somebody had to come out from the back four to challenge you or they dropped off and marked all of the other players and let you have the ball. Then, when you get to the goal then that's a different problem because then they have to come in and gauge and stop you from having a shot.
"But every time we got the ball, all we did was look for the next pass. Every time.
"Now, that's admirable if...
"I had this analogy in my head at the weekend. You know when you go to Benidorm and you see the Elvis singer? You know what he's trying to do but he looks a bit like Elvis and he sounds a bit like Elvis.
"I think we're like Man City. We're the Benidorm Man City.
"We're trying to play this type of football, which we saw fail for Man City the other night by the way against one of the top teams in the world, because all they did was shut up shop.
"So, it doesn't matter how many passes you've had. If you don't get behind or cause danger or shoot at the goal and make the goalkeeper make saves or people block things, you don't get anywhere.
"And that's what our issue at the moment is that, we're trying to be something that we can't be because we haven't got the tempo, the passing speed, the leg speed to do those things but what can you do instead?
"Well that's the problem that the coach has got because for me, we might as well just try and play as much football as we can in the final third and get there as quick as we can but that goes against everything that this Club's been about for the last two or three seasons.
"That is for me what the issue is, is that Millwall were totally happy with us having the ball. We could have had the ball for 95% of that possession on Saturday if they could have let us do that because they just didn't care about it.
"They were just waiting for those opportunities and sadly it came from a little incident where I thought it was a freekick actually. The referee tried to play an advantage and we lost it straight away and then they were on us. But, it's bad."
