Rory Fallow and Matthew Keeling reacted to Sunderland’s 2-1 loss to MK Dons in League One this past weekend on the most recent edition of the Wise Men Say podcast and they spent some time criticising Max Power’s performance in Saturday’s game during the show.
Power started this game but he was taken off in the 67th minute when he was replaced by Chris Maguire. The central midfielder scored the Black Cats’ only goal in this game, as he opened the scoring in the 12th minute and he also earned the highest overall WhoScored rating (6.81) of any Sunderland player versus MK Dons.
However, it seems as though Fallow and Keeling were far from impressed by the £540k-rated man’s performance on Saturday, as they slated him on this recent edition of the Wise Men Say podcast.
Here is what Fallow had to say about Power’s performance versus MK Dons:
“I know Power got a goal today and that was something for him at least and we were hoping that [would be] a bit of a turning point for him but dear me, he was poor today.”
Keeling agreed with Fallow’s comments on Power and here is what he had to say about the midfielder’s performance versus MK Dons: (5:33)
“The midfield was shocking. Power – there’s something not right there, I think, it’s weird.
“He’s got a goal, it was a nice goal, it took a deflection, it was a decent strike – we want to see more of that and when it went in you thought, ‘ah, great, that’s just what he needs’, an early goal as well – then he just regressed.”
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TIF Thoughts on what these podcasters had to say about Power…
While Power scored Sunderland’s only goal in this game, the 27-year-old also played a significant role in MK Dons’ second goal of the game, as he fouled Scottish midfielder Scott Fraser inside of the Black Cats’ penalty box early in the second half to give MK Dons a spot-kick that Fraser himself then converted.
As well as that, the North East club failed to ‘create enough clear-cut chances’ in this game, according to the BBC, while Power didn’t make a single key pass or complete a single successful dribble in this game according to WhoScored, so perhaps the central midfielder’s failure to help his side to create more chances throughout the game is one reason why these podcasters weren’t impressed by his overall performance.
With all of this in mind, we feel it’s understandable why Keeling and Fallow believe that Power produced a poor performance versus MK Dons despite scoring the opening goal of this game.