Rory Fallow and Matthew Keeling reacted to Sunderland’s FA Cup first-round loss to Mansfield Town this past weekend during the most recent edition of the Wise Men Say podcast and spent some time criticising Max Power’s performance during the show.
It may be fair to say that Power has been a key figure for Sunderland this term. He was named the Black Cats’ new team captain for the 2020/21 campaign and he has featured in 11 of the North East club’s 14 games in all competitions so far this season.
With that in mind, it mightn’t be a surprise that he played the entirety of Sunderland’s FA Cup clash with Mansfield Town on Saturday but he was unable to help his team overcome their League Two opposition as the Black Cats suffered a 1-0 defeat and were knocked out of the competition.
Fallow slammed the £540k-rated midfielder’s performance versus Mansfield Town during this recent edition of the Wise Men Say podcast, saying:
“For me, out of the midfield two, it pains us to say it but Power was poor. Especially [in the] second-half – really sloppy, I thought.”
Keeling agreed with Fallow’s comments and he shared a similarly negative assessment of Power’s performance in this game, saying: (12:29)
“Power was quite sluggish, which is unusual. Even vocally, he wasn’t quite there. I don’t know, he just didn’t look himself.”
Was Power Sunderland's worst player versus Mansfield Town?
YES
NO
TIF Thoughts on what Fallow and Keeling had to say about Power’s performance versus Mansfield Town…
Fallow and Keeling aren’t alone in their belief that Power didn’t deliver a great performance in Saturday’s FA Cup loss. ChronicleLive gave the 27-year-old a rating of 5/10 for his performance on Saturday – the joint-second-lowest rating that they gave to any Black Cats player – describing his performance as ‘slow and sluggish,’ while The Sunderland Echo gave Power a rating of four, stating that he ‘was largely ineffectual in possession and did little to hurt the opposition.’
With that in mind, as well as these two podcasters’ comments on the midfielder’s performance, it would seem that Power disappointed in Saturday’s loss to lower-league opposition.
Despite being a prominent figure for the Black Cats this term, you could argue that Power hasn’t been one of Sunderland’s most impressive performers on the pitch in general so far this season, as he has earned an overall WhoScored rating of just 6.57/10 from his seven League One appearances, which is the sixth-lowest rating that has been earned by any Sunderland player so far during the 2020/21 campaign.
So, it might be fair to say that Power’s poor performance versus Mansfield Town may not have been a one-off and it mightn’t have been as “unusual” as Keeling suggested that he didn’t perform well.