“Embarrassment”: Luke O’Nien announces the Sunderland dressing room decision following a decisive Blackburn loss

Luke O’Nien, the captain of Sunderland, reacts to the team’s crushing 5-1 loss to Blackburn at the Stadium of Light.

Luke O’Nien, the captain of Sunderland, believes that following their 5-1 loss against Blackburn at the Stadium of Light, the players must accept responsibility.

Rovers forward Sammie Szmodics scored twice in the first half, prompting interim manager Mike Dodds to label the performance as “completely unacceptable.” After the break, Blackburn scored twice in as many minutes thanks to goals from Ryan Hedges and Tyhys Dolen. This effectively ended the game. Nine minutes from time, Blackburn replacement Andrew Moran made it 5-1 after Chris Rigg had pulled a goal back for the hosts.

“I had to have a little bit of time after the game to decompress a little bit, emotions, anger, a lot of emotions were there at the end of it,” said O’Nien after the match. “People might say it’s one to forget, I think it’s far from that. I think it’s one to remember, one to use and one to motivate. One to never happen again.

“We have to dissect that, it’s chalk and cheese from the weekend. When you have a performance that bad there is so much to take from it that we will.

“There’s just the first humiliation and disappointment because we failed Doddsy and ourselves. He provided us with all the information we required and advised us not to do the non-negotiables, such as sprinting faster and failing to chase the ball. We have no chance if you don’t do it in any of the games. I understand that he will bear the brunt of it, but we players—including myself—have to accept accountability.