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Evanilson came off the bench to cancel out Eliezer Mayenda’s opener to rescue a Bournemouth point in a 1-1 draw at the Vitality Stadium as Sunderland end a run of three straight losses.
Mayenda had given his side a deserved first-half lead, tapping home after Petrovic spilt a venomous Habib Diarra strike into his path.
However, keen to maintain Bournemouth’s run without defeat, that now stretches to eight games, Evanilson bundled in the equaliser in the second half, set up by a super Marcus Tavernier cross in the second half.
Buoyed into the opener after welcoming Granit Xhaka back into the team after seven matches out with injury, in retrospect, Sunderland will feel hard done by after being denied a penalty early on.
With just three minutes on the clock, Alex Jimenez’s clumsy challenge on Enzo Le Fee in the area was waved away by Jarred Gillett. VAR stuck with the on-field decision, deeming the tackle “normal contact”.
Sunderland, who also had eyes on earning their first win on the road since October, nearly found a second but a super Petrovic save denied Diarra one-on-one.
However, minutes later, Evanilson, who replaced David Brooks during the half-time interval, scored to deny Sunderland the chance to leapfrog the Cherries.
Instead, Bournemouth stay eighth while Sunderland stay 11th. However, after this round of fixtures concludes, with games around them, Bournemouth could drop to 11th while Sunderland could end up in 13th.
Le Bris: I’m happy about the team spirit to end losing run
Sunderland boss Regis Le Bris:
“A good point after a long run of defeats. We know how hard this league is, relentless, demanding and when you start to lose it’s hard to break this dynamic.
“This is a tough place, they are an intense, duel-driven, sprinting team. It was important to match this intensity and we showed this character, resilience, togetherness.
“We had good periods with good quality. Probably not enough to score another goal but happy about the team spirit especially.”
Iraola: We paid the price of a slow start
Bournemouth boss Andoni Iraola:
“We paid for our slow start. They scored the first goal. After, we improved and in the second half were the closest to winning it.
“But we paid the price in terms of two points today in terms of how we started the game.”
On Evanilson’s goal: “It’s a lovely cross, lovely finish – but for me it’s Ryan Christie who scores the goal. We need to take quickly these kind of free-kicks.
“We were losing a lot of time setting up in the first half, they were losing an incredible amount of time every free-kick, and if we don’t take it quickly the game becomes so boring, there’s no rhythm into the game. The decision to take it quickly, play and put tempo into the game, I’m very happy because of this.”
