During the latest edition of the Wise Men Say podcast, Rory Fallow and Matthew Keeling reflected on Sunderland’s 2-1 loss to MK Dons on Saturday and they spent some time talking about Josh Scowen and his performance in that game during the show.
Scowen joined the Black Cats from Championship side Queens Park Rangers back in January. He made just four League One appearances for Sunderland last season following his move to the Stadium of Light but it may be fair to say that he has been more of a key player for the North East club this term, as he has featured in 10 of Sunderland’s 11 league games so far this season, starting eight of them.
He played the full 90 minutes for Phil Parkinson’s side against MK Dons but he didn’t produce a very impressive performance as he earned the second-lowest WhoScored rating (6.23) of any Sunderland outfield player to have played the entirety of Saturday’s League One game and during this recent edition of the Wise Men Say podcast, Keeling slammed the £720k-rated central midfielder, with the podcaster describing his most recent performance as “rotten”.
Keeling said: “Scowen was rotten, I thought. Has he ever hit the target with anything? He doesn’t do it, for me. He’s better out wide, but in the middle, for me, I think he’s been really disappointing.
“The midfield three were rotten, really poor – but I think Scowen, I expected more when he came from the dizzy heights of Queens Park Rangers. I can’t work out what sort of player he is.
“He needs to do a lot more – well, they all do, to be honest, but he needs to do more than that.”
Have you been impressed by Scowen since he joined Sunderland?
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TIF Thoughts on what Keeling had to say about Scowen…
While only three Sunderland players have made more League One appearances than Scowen this season, the midfielder has earned a lower overall WhoScored rating (6.56) than as many as 12 other Black Cats players in the league this term.
With that in mind, perhaps Scowen has had plenty of opportunities to show what he can do for the League One side this season and he has thus far failed to set the world alight, so it may be understandable why Keeling seems disappointed by Scowen and how he has performed for the North East club so far, as it would seem that this past weekend’s poor performance was not an outlier.