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Your support makes all the difference.In the 1980s, a decade in which the FA Cup still mattered, a beer company ran an advert set in a football dressing-room, where the winners were in tears because they had only champagne to drink while the losers celebrated with cold Heineken. It might have been updated at the Stadium of Light last night. Bolton, who like Sunderland considered the FA Cup an impediment to their Premiership survival, can now concentrate on finishing fourth bottom. Sunderland, even more precariously placed, will have to suffer a fourth-round tie at Blackburn after squeezing through this fixture via a replay which staggered into extra time.
Such was the incompetence of much of the finishing – Kevin Kyle, who is both a Sunderland reserve and a Scottish international striker, missed three clear headers – that it seemed likely matters could only be settled by a penalty shoot-out. Howard Wilkinson's decision to rest his first-choice strikers, Kevin Phillips and Tore Andre Flo, looked a very poor call.
Instead, two goals in the space of a minute ensured that the 30th anniversary of Sunderland's astonishing FA Cup run would not be marked by an exit at the first hurdle. First, Kyle attempted and failed to control a long ball into the box by Emerson Thome only to see Julio Arca rifle the loose ball home.
A minute later, the tie was settled as Darren Williams surged into the area and cut the ball back for Michael Proctor, who scored his third goal in four appearances at the Stadium of Light, curling his drive beautifully past Kevin Poole. Compared to what had gone before, it was stardust.
With Wilkinson and his Bolton counterpart, Sam Allardyce, playing down this match, there were precious few to see it. The Stadium of Light boasted the second smallest crowd in its short history, less than half the 33,000 which a few years ago came here to watch Manchester United in a reserve game.
Nevertheless, Wilkinson would have been encouraged by Sean Thornton, a summer signing from Tranmere, who marked his Sunderland debut with a thrusting display, while Marcus Stewart might have spared everyone extra time had he converted a one-on-one.
All Bolton had to show the 116-odd fans who made the journey from Lancashire was a fierce drive from Paul Warhurst and a beautiful darting run from Youri Djorkaeff. Both were smothered by Thomas Sorensen. That apart, the match was reduced to a series of increasingly uncoordinated attacks by two sides who regarded a long run in the FA Cup with the same suspicion a couple of Presbyterians would reserve for a bottle of whisky.
Sunderland (4-4-2): Sorensen; Williams, Bjorklund (Varga 60), Thome, Gray (Proctor, 66); Medina (McCartney, 91), Thornton, McCann, Arca; Kyle, Stewart. Substitutes: Oster, Macho (gk).
Bolton Wanderers (3-5-2): Poole; N'Gotty, Campo, Whitlow, Mendy (Hunt, 81); Tofting, Farrelly (Walters, 62), Nolan, Smith; Djorkaeff, Facey (Warhurst, h-t). Substitutes: Bulent, Jaaskelainen (gk).
Referee: N Barry (Scunthorpe).
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