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Sunderland Boss Regis Le Bris praised Granit Xhaka’s importance to his team after the midfielder scored the equalizing goal in a 1–1 draw. everton,
Summer signing Xhaka has been integral to the Black Cats’ strong start to the season and he produced another impressive performance against the Toffees.
Everton enjoyed an impressive start and went ahead through Iliman Ndiaye’s superb finish on 15 minutes, but the hosts made progress in the game and equalized 43 seconds after the break when Xhaka’s effort bounced off the foot of James Tarkowski and into the net.
The goal was Xhaka’s first for the club and Le Bris emphasized his important role for Sunderland this season.
“He’s really important because we have a lot of young players and a lot of new players in this league,” the Sunderland head coach said.
“They don’t know the situation and a player like Granit, with his previous experiences, is really important for us. He has this quality to score.
“I’m happy to have a player like this. He wants to play football, he wants to be competitive, he’s always connected to the game and sets the standard.”
When asked if he thinks Xhaka can be one of the best midfielders Premier League At the moment, Le Bris replied: “I don’t know, because we have many good players in this league.
“We like granite, so we probably wouldn’t be good judges in this situation.
“He’s really important. I think he enjoys playing with us too, because the boys relate well to him, the way he plays, they want to fight until the end.”
everton boss david moyes After the first 30 minutes it felt like their side were “bad”.
Returning to the Stadium of Light for the first time since overseeing Sunderland’s expulsion from the top flight in 2017, Moyes saw his team fail to extend their early advantage.
The Toffees missed a wonderful chance to double their lead in the 28th minute when Jack Grealish sent a deep cross to Thiarno Barry at the back post.
The forward fired the ball over the bar from inside the six-yard box and Moyes admitted that Sunderland took some “invigoration” from that miss.
“I think after 30 minutes I would have been disappointed if I was going home with just a point, I think after 90 minutes I was quite happy with a point,” Moyes said.
“We played well. I think Barry’s miss got us in the lead and we went 2-0 up and after that, our misses started to give them a little bit of power.
“We played pretty well the first 20 or 30 minutes, but in the second half we didn’t play well at all. We were bad.”
Everton had chances earlier, when James Garner’s strike went wide just seconds into the game and Grealish hit a post.
Moyes said: “We were concerned with how strongly they finished the first half.
“We missed, Jimmy hit the post, I think Grealish hit the post, we did enough to get ourselves a few goals.
“We’ve been told it’s hard to get here and even harder to win. We got close tonight, but not quite.”