Jermain Defoe and Victor Anichebe have done their bit but it is no coincidence that Sunderland’s run of three wins in four games has coincided with Lamine Koné’s return to central-defensive form.
In those three Premier League victories – at Bournemouth, against Hull City at home, and the 2-1 defeat of Leicester City on Saturday – Koné has been paired with Papy Djilobodji, who has switched from being a big part of David Moyes’s problems to becoming a key element in the Sunderland manager’s prospective solution.
If relegation is to be avoided, he needs Anichebe and Defoe to keep creating and scoring goals, while Koné and Dilobodji – who have been subjected to frequent, private, afternoon tutorials on the art of defending from their tracksuited manager – stay defensively strong.
Against Leicester that pair set an encouraging template, with Koné reminding everyone why Everton were so keen to spend £18m on him during the summer and Djilobodji demonstrating the qualities which once made him a Chelsea player.
The 28-year-old Senegal international never actually threatened to establish himself in the first team at Stamford Bridge but Moyes invested £8m in the pacy left‑footer. The only drawback was that Djilobodji’s positioning, decision-making and concentration were somewhat wayward, while Koné seemed to have lost focus after signing a lucrative new contract to stay at Sunderland.
The 27-year-old Ivory Coast international looked a shadow of the player signed for £5m from Lorient by Sam Allardyce last January and who played a key part in the successful avoidance of relegation last spring. It seems the security of that bumper new deal initially bred complacency.
“I think it was when he signed the new contract,” Moyes said.“I just don’t think his performances were up the same standard everybody told me they had been last season bBut now I think Lamine’s turned a corner. We’ve been putting an awful lot of work into Lamine and Papy and they will not thank me for having them out in the afternoon as much as I have done. But Lamine has a lot of quality and his positional play has got better. They’ve both improved but they’ve quite often been doing double training sessions because if we’re going to have any chance of staying up, we need our centre-halves to play well. We’ve always got a chance if we defend well.”