Mayenda sparks stunning Sunderland start to increase Potter’s West Ham pain

Advertising hoardings dotted around Sunderland are adorned with inviting images of long, sandy beaches and invite visitors to embark on adventures in “our city by the sea”. It is all part of an £80m project designed to reinvent and regenerate the post-industrial riverside area around the Stadium of Light, but West Ham had evidently not bargained for this rejuvenation to extend to the football team.

As the second half unfolded an exhilarating afternoon that exceeded the wildest dreams of even the most optimistic Sunderland fans became not so much an adventure as an ordeal by the North Sea for West Ham. Right from the start a Sunderland starting XI featuring seven debut-making summer signings and only three survivors of May’s playoff final triumph looked quick, agile and extremely nimble footed.

When Habib Diarra, the club record £30m midfielder from Strasbourg, showed off an impressive change of first-half pace as he executed a slick one-two with Eliezer Mayenda, the heart of West Ham’s defence was pierced and Diarra had only Mads Hermansen to beat.

Although West Ham’s £20m goalkeeping buy from Leicester rescued the situation with a decent save, it was clear the hosts would prove no pushovers. And particularly not with Diarra offering fleet-footed excellence and Switzerland’s Granit Xhaka, recently arrived from Bayer Leverkusen, performing a quasi-sweeping role at the base of midfield.

Not that the visitors were exactly out of things at that stage. For a while in the first half, they forced Sunderland into counterattacking mode and it took a sliding, 11th hour, clearance on Dan Ballard’s part to prevent El Hadji Malick Diouf shooting West Ham ahead as Jarrod Bowen proved a growing irritant to Sunderland’s backline.

One of football’s little mysteries revolves around the failure of one of the so-called “top six” clubs to realise precisely how good Bowen is and snap him up. Goodness knows where West Ham would be without him.

Even so, Régis Le Bris could be quietly pleased that Robin Roefs, Sunderland’s new Netherlands Under-21 goalkeeper who was preferred to the playoff hero Anthony Patterson in goal, had not been over exerted.

View image in fullscreen Dan Ballard heads home the second goal of the match for Sunderland. Photograph: Allstar Picture Library Ltd/Ed Sykes/Apl/Sportsphoto

From his vantage point in the directors’ box Nordi Mukiele must have felt reassured he was making the right choice in swapping Paris Saint-Germain for Sunderland. That move is poised to be confirmed imminently with the full-back becoming signing No 12 of this busiest of close seasons on Wearside.

Simon Adingra almost made a scoring start to life in red and white stripes after arriving from Brighton but, instead, sent a shot swerving and dipping just wide. Shortly afterwards Diarra almost crowned a memorable debut with a goal yet lifted his left-foot shot just a fraction to high.

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It did not matter as Omar Alderete, the Paraguay centre-half, another making his debut, hooked a cross into the area and Mayenda, a scorer at Wembley in May, backed into his marker before somehow managing to contort his body into a position from where he headed Sunderland into the lead.

As the roof threatened to come off, West Ham found themselves up against not merely the physical barrier presented by Alderete and friends but a formidable wall of noise.

Graham Potter’s response was to liberate Callum Wilson from his bench and the former Newcastle striker trotted on to a cacophony of boos. Before Wilson could get his bearings West Ham were two down, the unattended Ballard having guided a tremendous header beyond Hermansen after meeting Adingra’s deep cross. As good as the first two Sunderland goals were, they were facilitated by dreadful visiting defending.

Hermansen will not want to watch replays of the third, curled in impressively by the substitute Wilson Isidor who, after meeting a Xhaka pass, ran at the back line before unleashing an effort that the goalkeeper touched but could not hold.

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