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Diego Costa Chelsea John O'Shea Sunderland
Diego Costa of Chelsea, right, reacts after being tackled by the Sunderland defender John O'Shea. Photograph: Alex Livesey/Getty Images
Diego Costa of Chelsea, right, reacts after being tackled by the Sunderland defender John O'Shea. Photograph: Alex Livesey/Getty Images

Sunderland’s Lee Cattermole cleans up to keep Chelsea at bay

This article is more than 9 years old
Gus Poyet says Diego Costa ‘always close to the limit’
Sunderland can make it hard for any team, says José Mourinho Mourinho allows Chelsea to have Christmas party

If you take José Mourinho at face value the Football Association should probably issue Sunderland with parking tickets but Gus Poyet’s players deserve credit for a bit more than magnificently stubborn defending.

Chelsea’s manager conveniently ignored the reality that Sunderland created the better chances and, had Adam Johnson not missed an inviting late opening, would surely have beaten his side for the third time in a row.

Then there was Lee Cattermole’s contribution. Poyet’s holding midfielder was outstanding, his performance not only leaving Cesc Fàbregas in the shade but raising the question as to what precisely he has to do to earn an England summons.

It seems Cattermole’s past disciplinary – or indisciplinary – record counts against him but on Saturday all questions regarding temperament revolved around Diego Costa.

Marked out of the game by the excellent John O’Shea, who has raised his game appreciably since Sunderland’s 8-0 thrashing at Southampton, Costa’s frustration at Poyet’s initial determination to “park the bus” left him lucky to remain on the pitch.

First there was the moment when O’Shea was grounded in the wake of an admittedly feisty challenge on Costa and the striker lunged two-footed at the prone Ireland centre-half, yet escaped punishment.

A yellow card did eventually arrive when Costa caught Wes Brown in the mouth with a trailing arm while challenging for a header but many thought it should have been a straight red. Cue a debate about intent, or the lack of it, with a smiling Poyet agreeing Cattermole would have been sent off “for sure” had he been involved in a similar skirmish and suggesting O’Shea had done his adversary “a favour” by not making a meal of Costa’s first transgression. “Diego’s always close to the limit,” said the Sunderland manager. “Always on the line.” The Spaniard will be exiled to the Stamford Bridge stands on Wednesday because the collection of a fifth booking means he is suspended for Tottenham’s visit. The bad news for Mauricio Pochettino is that Didier Drogba and Loïc Rémy hope to help Chelsea extend their unbeaten League run while emphasising that the failure to score against Sunderland represented a rare aberration.

There were mitigating circumstances. A certain, perhaps inevitable, flatness in the aftermath of last week’s 5-0 Champions League thrashing of Schalke allied to a 5am midweek return from Germany probably played a big part in this surrender of two points. Tellingly Willian shone during the first half before fading as fast as a setting tropical sun.

“You can’t win every game,” said a sanguine Mourinho. “If you lose points because of complacency or lack of commitment then that’s a big problem for my mentality, for my kind of leadership. But when you lose points because the opponent tries everything to make it difficult and when my boys tried everything to win, there’s no complaining. Defending the way Sunderland defend they can make it difficult for any team.”

Even so, Pochettino will have noted the persistent problems the impressive Connor Wickham gave Branislav Ivanovic. Deployed wide on the left, Wickham very nearly created a couple of goals and Chelsea’s right-back may struggle to remember many 90 minutes as awkward as this.

Equally Fàbregas and friends would not relish meeting Cattermole on a weekly basis. “Lee was brilliant,” said Brown. “His defending’s up there with that of any midfielder I’ve seen. He’s tracked Chelsea back from the first moment to the last and I thought he wanted it more than a few of their players.”

This latest tactical triumph against his former club – and Mourinho – left Poyet beaming. “It was about shape, caring, discipline,” he said. “Not too many players enjoy defending like that but against top teams you need to. It wasn’t easy for Chelsea to come and find all our players in the last part of the pitch.

“We then came into the game, started creating chances and might have nicked it. Chelsea tried everything – they passed the ball right, left, over the top, into the corners. They threw on every striker they had. But we did something special. We stopped them scoring for the first time this season.”

Nemanja Matic has a warning for those intending to emulate Sunderland’s achievement. “Of course now every team’s going to defend against us,” he said. “We know that and we’re ready. We’ll find a space to score. In the next game we have to score.”

Man of the match Lee Cattermole (Sunderland)

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