Aiden McGeady scored Sunderland's second goal this afternoon as they pulled off a remarkable comeback from 3-0 down to take a point from a 3-3 draw in the Sky Bet Championship away to Bristol City.
The home team looked certain to extend their lead to five points over the chasing pack for Playoff places in the Championship and had given themselves a bit of breathing space as they led 3-0 at half time against struggling Sunderland. A goal from Aden Flint and two from Famara Diedhiou were enough for Sunderland's official Twitter account to post this tweet: (which they later deleted)
It wasn't just the Black Cats away support and their Twitter admin who thought there was no hope but Bristol City, in truth, were architects of their own downfall scoring two OGs in the second half. Add to that McGeady's goal and Sunderland show signs of life in the Championship relegation battle.
The first OG came on the 70th minute when Lee Cattermole's header crashed off the Bristol City crossbar and Josh Brownhill was just in the wrong place at the wrong time as the rebounding ball hit off of his back leg as he was coming to ground after jumping with Cattermole.
Bristol would have been forgiven for thinking this was just a stroke of bad luck and business could resume as usual until eleven minutes later McGeady struck.
The Irish international made a very clever run across the front of the Bristol City six yard box to get on the end of a Sunderland free kick and slot it home into the bottom left hand corner to make it 3-2 in the 81st minute.
It was a tense last nine minutes then with Sunderland's Lualua having a shot from distance saved by Bristol City keeper, Frank Fielding before Fielding recovered excellent and pulled off an impressive reaction save from Ashley Fletcher to deny him a follow up goal.
Sunderland's heroic comeback was complete with a horrible bit of misfortune for Marlon Pack. Joel Asoro cleverly found his way into the box and attempted to cut the ball back towards the penalty spot but the ball hit the back of Pack's leg and it chips his own keeper to make it 3-3.
Bristol remain in the playoff places in 6th place but with Derby County only escaping Pride Park with a point from their clash with Norwich today, the Birmingham derby becomes an even bigger game for Aston Villa where a win will see them go second in to the automatic promotion places.
