Black Cats manager delighted with defensive display in Chelsea draw
Sunday 30 November 2014 09:44, UK
Sunderland manager Gus Poyet said Lee Cattermole doesn’t get the national recognition he deserves after a man-of-the-match display in the goalless draw with Chelsea.
The 26-year-old was brilliant in front of the back four as the Black Cats frustrated the league leaders and stopped them scoring for the first time this season.
Poyet told Saturday Night Football that Cattermole plays the defensive midfielder role to "perfection", but says he understands why England manager Roy Hodgson has not called him up.
“The best thing for the manager of the national team is to pick the players for his style and probably most of the people at that level don’t know Lee Cattermole the way I do,” he said.
“He was playing a typical centre midfielder role when I got here where he was able to run where he wanted with a little bit of freedom, but the role in front of the back four is a key role for us.
"It’s very important, he needs to know when there is danger, when he can go and tackle, when he can press, when he can be close to the defence, and read the game in a certain way, and he is really enjoying it.
“He is very different from when I arrived here and it is a pleasure to see that. He is a player who has improved the most with me at Sunderland and we have a great understanding.”
With Cattermole in front of the back four, the Black Cats put in a terrific defensive display to restrict Chelsea to few sights on goal.
The performance was a far cry from the 8-0 thrashing by Southampton last month and Poyet says his players learned a lot from that defeat.
“The quantity of defensive work we have done since the Southampton game is paying off,” he said. “Credit to the players, they were defending for their lives and it was a day that you could expect us to play for three hours and it would very difficult for the opposition to score.”
Chelsea went into the game on the back of a 5-0 victory over Schalke in the Champions League but were unable to find the same attacking fluency Stadium of Light.
“I watched them in the Champions League in midweek when they scored five and it was a perfect performance,” said Poyet.
“We knew we needed to be good in terms of the defence. We tried to be compact, force them wide - which they didn’t do and that helped us a little bit – then we tried to go forward and create a few chances on the break or from a free-kick.”
