29th April 2023- Championship, Sunderland 2 Watford 2

WFC.Net goal commentary: 1 2

Attendance: 44,944

BBC Sport: Sunderland kept their play-off hopes alive as they fought back from 2-0 down to earn a stoppage-time draw with Watford at the Stadium of Light.

Sky Sports: Christian Kabasele and Ryan Porteous headed Watford into a two-goal lead but Sunderland came fighting back, with Luke O’Nien halving the deficit before Roberts’ moment of brilliance deep into stoppage time.

BHappy: If there’s criticism to be levelled based on this game in particular, Chris Wilder’s ultra-conservative substitutions… Bacuna for Asprilla, Ngakia for Sarr, Hoedt for Andrews… bear consideration. The last quarter of the game saw a now exhausted and isolated Davis as our only outlet, pressure invited further as Sunderland chased the game. Much easier to assess those decisions after the match of course. We were two minutes from a fine and unexpected win… and it wasn’t as if the bench (or the squad, given availability) was overburdened with viable attacking options. Aráujo would surely have required Davis to stay on the pitch to have a chance of being worthwhile.

Fran’s Watford Blog: The players were applauded off after what had been a spirited performance against a team who had something to play for. It may be that we benefitted from the absence of João Pedro as we tend to rely on him too much and he ends up trying to do everything which often means he is not where he should be. It was a great shame that, after taking a two-goal lead, panic in the defence allowed the home side to take a share of the points, but it was a decent game of football and, for the first time in a while, my heart was racing during the game as it felt like it meant something, and I really cared.