Sunderland marked their return to the Premier League with a commanding 3-0 win over West Ham at the Stadium of Light. The victory arrived in a second-half surge that settled any early nerves after a competitive first half in which West Ham applied pressure.<\/p>\n
Eliezer Mayenda opened the scoring just past the hour mark with Sunderland\u2019s first topflight goal in eight years. His headed finish into the top left-hand corner restored momentum for the hosts and changed the tone of the match.<\/p>\n
Twelve minutes later Dan Ballard, the Championship semi-final hero, extended the lead with a towering header at the far post, a moment that prompted a roar from the crowd behind the net and placed Sunderland firmly in control.<\/p>\n
West Ham pushed for a route back into the game and created a number of decent chances, but the Sunderland defence remained composed and disciplined, holding the line as the match entered its closing stages.<\/p>\n
In stoppage time Wilson Isidor added a third, a strike from just outside the box that found the bottom left of the net and passed the keeper, sealing an emphatic opening-day result. The late goal underlined Sunderland\u2019s commitment to their promotion slogan and the spirit the side brought to the fixture, fighting “till the end,” as the phrase has been used throughout their campaign.<\/p>\n
The result was an emphatic and unexpected return to the top flight for Sunderland against an established Premier League opponent. The scoreline, produced by three well-taken goals, left little doubt about the hosts\u2019 performance on the night and gave supporters a memorable welcome back at the Stadium of Light.<\/p>\n
THE LINEUPS<\/p>\n
SUN: Roefs; Hume, Ballard, Seelt, Reinildo; Diarra, Xhaka, Sadiki; Talbi, Mayenda, Adingra<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sunderland returned to the Premier League, beating West Ham 3-0 at the Stadium of Light opening day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1793,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[689,438],"tags":[797,791],"class_list":["post-1794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sunderland","category-west-ham-united","tag-dan-ballard","tag-eliezer-mayenda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1795,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794\/revisions\/1795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}