English League Championship/ Sunderland 1 Leicester City 1: After Wednesday night's 3-0 win away to Leeds a Sunderland supporter asked on a fans' website if anyone knew where the 2009 Champions League final was being played, because he wanted to book his flights and hotel.
By full-time on Saturday he might have been putting his travel plans on hold, as Sunderland manager Roy Keane said of the 1-1 draw with Leicester City: "It was a reality check."
The euphoria that greeted Keane's arrival at the club and carried the team to three successive victories, having failed to pick up a point in their opening four Championship games, was tangible again on Saturday at the Stadium of Light, where the attendance for the Cork man's first home game in charge was 11,000 up (to 35,104) on the club's last fixture at the ground at end of August.
If they are to fill all 48,300 seats, however, the team is going to have perform significantly better than it did against a Leicester side that was four places from the bottom of the table when it arrived in the north-east.
For long phases of the game Sunderland were desperately poor, with Liam Miller, playing on the right of midfield, enduring a particularly hapless afternoon before being replaced on 64 minutes.
It was Miller's mistake three minutes into the second half that led to Leicester taking the lead, the midfielder's stray pass falling to Andy Johnson who played in Matt Fryatt on the left, his low shot beating Ben Alnwick.
"Keano, what's the score," sang Leicester's small band of travelling supporters, who appeared as stunned by the scoreline as the locals.
Keane responded by replacing right back Neil Collins with young midfielder Grant Leadbitter, switching captain Dean Whitehead to the back, his second change of the afternoon after Daryl Murphy limped off on 15 minutes, the third Irish striker Keane had lost in four days, after both David Connolly and Stephen Elliott went off injured against Leeds.
Dwight Yorke replaced Murphy to make his Sunderland debut, receiving an ovation of deafening proportions when he took to the field, but while he produced plenty of sublime first-time touches he failed to have a significant impact on the game.
Tobias Hysen's impact, however, was almost immediate, the young Swedish winger (son of Liverpool's former centre back, Glenn), signed by Niall Quinn before Keane's arrival, equalising within a minute of replacing Miller, firing low into the bottom left corner of the goal from the edge of the box.
Both sides had sufficient half-chances to steal the game, with Kenny Cunningham having to rescue Sunderland after a Stanislav Varga mistake, the former Irish captain blocking a late Fryatt effort on goal. Graham Kavanagh, named man of the match, despite failing to reproduce the form that won him the same award for his first two appearances in a Sunderland shirt, attempted to drive his team on to its fourth successive victory, but the Leicester defence, with Ireland's Paddy McCarthy at its heart, was rarely seriously troubled.
A point, then, in Keane's home managerial debut, his unbeaten record intact. That his team managed to fight back for a draw, despite playing so poorly, will cheer him. That their display was so mediocre at times will bring it home that there's much, much work to be done.
SUNDERLAND: Alnwick, Neill Collins (Leadbitter 55), Cunningham, Varga, Robbie Elliott, Liam Miller (Hysen 65), Whitehead, Kavanagh, Wallace, Brown, Murphy (Yorke 15). Subs Not Used: Ward, Danny Collins. Goals: Hysen 66.
LEICESTER: Henderson, Kenton, Kisnorbo, McCarthy, Johansson, Wesolowski, Johnson, Hughes, Porter, Fryatt, O'Grady. Subs Not Used: Logan, Maybury, Hume, Tiatto, McAuley. Booked: Fryatt. Goals: Fryatt 48.
