As each season goes on Vito Mannone has been seeing fewer playing time in the main team of Sunderland which is a fairly disappointing thing to see for a player who was named as the Official Player of the Year back in his debut season which kicked off on July of 2013.

Vito Mannone was the star of Sunderland a few years ago with amazing saves and quick reflexes which attracted the attention of major clubs but things have taken a turn for the worse as the Italian shot-stopper is now struggling trying to get consistent playing time in the Premier League outfit which is currently located in the bottom spots of the English League.

For the majority of the season Vito Mannone has had to settle with a place on the sidelines of Sunderland as he watched Costel Pantillimon take center stage and now his future in the club is starting to appear even more in doubt after Sunderland recalled the 21 year old shot-stopper Jordan Pickford.

In 20 Premier League matches, Sunderland has conceded 39 goals which is more than any other club and it seems that as a way to solve this issue, they have re-called Jordan Pickford and ended his loan deal with Preston North End.

The return of Jordan Pickford will put even more pressure and bring more competition to the goal-keeper position of Sunderland and makes things harder for Vito Mannone to snatch a consistent starting role in the relegation threatened club which is starting to look for options in the transfer market.

Sam Allardyce is the coach of Sunderland and he has recently been giving Vito Mannone a few starting roles in their latest games. The Italian goal-keeper played the entirety of Sunderland’s Premier League matches against: Manchester City, Liverpool and Manchester City.
Vito Mannone now can’t afford to make any slip-ups as there are other players who are waiting in the sidelines.

Sam Allardyce reckons finishing comes naturally to a player and it’s not something which can be coached.

On plenty of occasions in the recent games, the Sunderland players have failed to take advantage of scoring opportunities because of poor finishing.

According to Allardyce, not much can be done regarding it.

Speaking after losing to Arsenal, Allardyce said, “People who claim that they teach their players how to finish, they tell lie because in my opinion, it’s totally natural and it’s an ability which a player possesses right from his starting days.”

“You can be a frequent scorer, but, it does not mean you would necessarily be a finisher. In the squad that I have got here at Sunderland, I believe it’s only Defoe who would come in the category of finishers. The rest of the players, they are pretty good, they can and do find the net on a consistent basis, but, I don’t see them as finishers.”

When asked whether it would have made a difference had Defoe played the game, the 61-year old said, “Yes, I would like to believe so. A couple of those would probably have been converted into goals. Who knows?”

“But, we’ve some other class players as well in our ranks. Fletcher has been in good form and so has been Duncan. With these two out there on pitch, we should have done better.”
“The only goal that came for us, it was a self goal by the opposition which means that all the opportunities we made for ourselves went begging and those weren’t tough ones. You would back yourself to capitalize in those situations most of the time. It is hugely frustrating to lose by so much in spite of having so many opportunities.”

Jose Mourinho is of the opinion that former midfielder Kevin De Bruyne was not mentally fit enough to play for Chelsea were competition for places is intense.

It is speculated that the winger will be joining Manchester City for around £ 50 million after having become a sensational hit at Wolfsburg. He had moved to the German club only around 12 months ago, but immediately contributed over 20 assists in his first full season back in German football. This impressive campaign appears to have improved his transfer value from £ 18 million – the money paid by Wolfsburg to Chelsea – to £ 50 million.

Mourinho says that he has no regrets about sellingDe Bruyne for what is now seen as a very low transfer fee since he felt that the clubwas unable to satisfy the requirements of the Belgian international. The Portuguese manager has so far been silent over the reason to sellDe Bruyne despite the player having featured only in a handful of games for the club. The Belgian had been brought to Chelsea from Genk for £ 7 million. Back then, it was seen as a good piece of business by Chelsea to sell him for £ 18 million.

“I am happy for him, because he is a good kid. I wanted to keep him. But he couldn’t handle fighting for his place in such a competitive squad.He told me it was not in his personality to be competing for a position in the team. He needed a team where he knows he can play every game. He told me he was not happy. He was not training very well. I accept that if this his mentality and that if it is his choice to go, it is better for Chelsea to make a good deal,” said Mourinho.

Vito Mannone could be set for a move away from the Stadium of Light after reports suggest that Sunderland are ready to listen to offers for the former Arsenal goalkeeper.

Mannone played second fiddle to Costel Pantilimon for much of the last season. This was rather surprising considering thatMannone was named as the club’s Player of the Year just 12 months prior to the arrival of Pantilimon. The player still has two years left on his contract and it is believed that the club see this is an ideal opportunity to cash in on the player.

Pantilimon came as the backup for the Italian goalkeeper after having just been released by champions Manchester City. Initially, he found opportunities at the Stadium of Light limited for his liking. His major breakthrough came during the early part of the campaign when Sunderland were on a rotten run of form that saw them suffer an 8-0 thrashing at the hands of Southampton. This coupled with several other high-profile defeats led to Mannone being dropped from the team. Since then, Pantilimon has kept his place in the starting line-up without any concern. Sunderland are planning to replace Mannone without stepping into the transfer market.

They are believed to have zeroed in on Jordan Pickford, who is one of the stars in the club’s youth academy, as the candidate to replace the 27-year-old. After managing to convince Dick Advocaat for a second season at Sunderland, the club were believed to be looking at signing former England star Robert Green from QPR. Green could be available on a cheap after his QPR team were relegated into the Championship with massive financial difficulties. Jordan has spent the last few seasons on loan at clubs like Carlisle United and Bradford but he will now be part of the first-team.

Vito Mannone is a 27 year old shot-stopper who has managed to make 9 appearances in this season for Sunderland but rumors are linking the Italian player with a move away from the Premier League club.

The goal-keeper who is preferred on being featured under the sticks is CostelPantilimon which has forced Vito Mannone to play only for certain matches but mostly just as a back-up player more than anything else.

Mannone is believed to be interested in being transferred to a club where he can turn into a regular starter which doesn’t seem to be happening in Sunderland anytime soon.

During the 2013-14 season, Mannone enjoyed being the first choice goal-keeper of Sunderland and he was even voted as the Player of the Year due to his consistently high level performances but things have fallen apart for the Italian as he was dropped and replaced by Pantilimon who was signed by Sunderland on June of 2014.

The Italian shot-stopper has already demonstrated and proved that he has what it takes to compete at a very high level in the Premier League but since the arrival of Pantilimon, it has been the Romanian footballer who has taken center stage.

Dick Advocaat is experiencing a similar thing to Jose Mourinho. Advocaat has 2 superb goal-keepers at this disposal but both players want to get consistent playing time in the pitch and not just stay on the sidelines and Jose Mourinho is living an almost identical thing at Chelsea as ThibautCourtois has forced PetrCech to stay on the bench even though Cech is still considered to be one of the finest players in Europe.

Fans of Sunderland are hoping that Vito Mannone would stay in the club but the player is hungry for playing time and unless he gets a more important role at the squad, it’s highly likely that Mannone will be exiting Sunderland in the summer.

Sunderland are set to leave manager Gus Poyet from his duties after witnessing the team crumbled to yet another horrible defeat in the Premier League.

A 4-0 loss against Aston Villa means that the club are just one point above the relegation zone with nine matches remaining in the season. Interestingly, Sunderland brought inPoyet to keep the club in the division last season. Despite the odds being heavily stacked against him,Poyet managed to keep Sunderland in the Premier League. It looks like he may not be present at the club to see out the campaign.

The club has not managed a league victory only in the last few weeks, but the situation has become precarious because of the teams below them picking up points of late. The likes of Aston Villa and Hull City have moved clear of the relegation zone while Burnley have closed the gap with a shock 1-0 win over Manchester City. To add insult to injury, Sunderland started with only 10 players after Sebastian Larsson failed to appear after the second half break. He did so only after three minutes had passed and the professionalism of the players has been questioned.

Opposition manager Tim Sherwood was confident that Poyet would bounce back from this disappointing defeat.“I’m extremely disappointed. I was not expecting this to happen.I don’t want to go into details, I have to analyse things very carefully. I have no explanation for what happened in the first half. If I was a fan, I would have done the same. They were quite right. It was not acceptable. Seb is one of the best professionals we have. He had a massive cut in his leg and they couldn’t stitch it quickly enough. We asked the referee to delay the restart but we waited for Seb,” said Poyet.

The Chelsea playmaker Cesc Fabregas reckons that in the last three years, the competitiveness in English Football has increased a little bit and it’s not that easy for the top sides to secure victories on a consistent basis now.

According to Fabregas, these days, not too many managers in the Premier League are willing to risk dropping points. They rather like to settle for the draw and that has made life difficult for the attacking players.

Fabregas has been a Premier League title holder with the Gunners, but, that had happened a decade back and the Spaniard had not played any role in that campaign at all. He had not got even one minute of playing time back then.

Now there is a good chance that Fabregas becomes a Premier League champion again.
Chelsea is leading the top tier table in England at the moment. Recently, they have suffered a shocker against Newcastle United playing away, but, despite that, they are fine and are holding their position quite strongly.

Speaking to a television correspondent yesterday, Fabregas said, “It’s a bit different now than what it was a few years back. There has been a lot of improvement in the standard of the teams as far as the defence is concerned. Everybody is looking to make sure that they avoid defeat somehow. Nobody wants risk and thus, for the attacking sides, there are not many opportunities. When the opposition is sitting back, it’s not easy. ”

“England was not associated with such sort of tactical Football earlier. It used to happen more in Spain, but, now here as well, we are seeing that it has become tactical.”
Fabregas had been in Spain since 2011 playing for Barcelona before he took a transfer to Chelsea this summer.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger says that he expects Sunderland goalkeeper Vito Mannone to put behind the disappointment of recently conceding goals through his own mistake and comeback stronger.

The former Arsenal man moved to Sunderland on a permanent basis in 2013. He has been unable to get regular first-team spot at the club due to various reasons like changes in management. He has featured in most of the matches this season despite the club bringing in Pantilimon from Manchester City on a free transfer. His recent high-profile mistakes against Arsenal cost Sunderland a 2-0 defeat.

Wenger, who saw Mannone from close quarters for several years, says that the 26-year-old has enough character to get him back from this negativity. It remains to be seen if Mannone will be able to retain the first-team spot given that managing Gus Poyet has a ready alternative in the form of Pantilimon. The Romanian goalkeeper was even able to keep out Joe Hart for several weeks in the City goal. Wes Brown made the other error that resulted in a goal. Alexis Sanchez was once again the scorer on the night, as the Chilean took his tally closer to double figures. Mannone was also in the goal for Sunderland’s recent 8-0 thrashing at the hands of Southampton.

“I know what it is for a goalkeeper to concede eight goals. But it happens. Mannone is quick, confident and overall he has done extremely well there. I felt for him, of course.It is not easy to lift the confidence but we expect a natural reaction from everybody. It is never easy because you ask questions about your quality.It was nice of him to offer to pay for the supporters . His gesture was spontaneous and not calculated because it was quite an expensive one so I think he shows that he cares,” said Wenger.

After having played 6 Premier League matches in this start of the season, Sunderland has not managed on winning a single league game so far. Vito Mannone has managed to secure 2 clean sheets and only conceded 6 goals in 6 matches but the club still remains fighting in the bottom spots of the standings as they struggle on scoring goals.
The Italian goal-keeper of Sunderland, Vito Mannone said that his teammates and himself are desperate on collecting 3 points and picking up a victory with their last league match against Swansea City ending in a goal-less draw.

‘’We wanted to reduce the goals and we’ve done that, but we’re desperate to win. We are happy about the clean sheets – once we get three points I think we’ll have a good season. “I think in the last game our performance was nearly perfect. We just couldn’t get a goal. It was simple really, we were fantastic defensively, we did what the manager asked us to do, we closed them down, we didn’t let them play and we created chances of our own’’ Mannone said as he was making reference to Sunderland’s Premier League match against Swansea City.

Vito Mannone is confident that the performance displayed from his teammates during their Premier League match with Swansea City was almost perfect but the only thing that they needed was to score a goal as neither sides managed on scoring a single goal during the 90 minutes of the match.

Even though the players of Sunderland are desperate and hungry for goals and victories, Vito Mannone has urged his teammates not to panic as the Italian shot-stopper believes that his squad is edging closer and closer to a victory with performances that are getting better according to Mannone.

“We can work on it and we have a very long season but we’re nearly there. We are working in a positive way. I like to think that way. The strikers will score and the day we get the win I think everything will change’’ Mannone added on.

The manager of Sunderland, Gus Poyet, is very happy with the striking options that he has at his disposal at the moment. Both his first choice men Fletcher as well as Wickham were in pretty decent nick the other day during the team’s first league game against West Bromwich Albion and then, when Jozy Altidore was brought on for a few minutes towards the end, there was spunk in his performance too. Although neither of the three got a goal, but, they were not rusty and always looked like testing the opposition players.

Sunderland couldn’t win the match against West Brom though. In fact, they were in bothersome position at one point having conceded the second goal, but, they managed to equalize in the 85th minute, thanks to Sebastian Larsson, and prevented themselves from getting off to the poorest start possible.

Talking to the reporters in the post match press conference, Poyet said, “As a manager, you feel comfortable when you have options upfront and thankfully, I have a few of them at the moment. The way our two starting strikers went in today’s game and then, to see Jozy coming in late and doing well, I would say I am happy and hopeful for the long season ahead.”

“Jozy has the idea what’s his current situation is. He is not able to play the full game at this point of time. We would most probably be getting him on for the final 30 minutes or so in the next few games and he needs to ensure that he gives his best in that period. He is an entertaining player. We all saw that the previous season.”

Sunderland’s next match is against Manchester United next weekend at Stadium of Light. The Red Devils, having lost their first game, will be under huge pressure there.