FULL TIME: Wanderers 2 Sunderland 2
4:54pm Saturday 5th January 2013 in Sport By Marc Iles
WANDERERS will have to go to the Stadium of Light to earn their place in the fourth round of the FA Cup after Sunderland battled back from two goals down.
Dougie Freedman made six changes to his line-up and it all looked good for an hour as the Whites' high-tempo pressing football had the Premier League side rattled.
Mistakes were frequent, and it was a howling error by Carlos Cuellar that led to Chung-Yong Lee stroking home the opening goal, his fifth of the campaign.
The defender needlessly squared the ball across his own penalty area to leave Simon Mignolet stranded as the Korean winger passed into an empty net.
Although Wanderers lived on their nerves at times – with Steven Fletcher heading over unchallenged from six yards – they deserved a half-time lead. The only sour note had been the fact young full-back Joe Riley limped off in only his second start of the season.
In fact, there could have been few complaints when Marvin Sordell made it two on 48 minutes.
The England Under-21 striker was starting for the first time since August and did well to generate enough power in his header from eight yards after Keith Andrews had put Martin Petrov's cross back into the danger zone.
Andy Lonergan – another restored to the first team after more than four months – then took centre stage with a brilliant stop from Fletcher's header.
Sub Connor Wickham finally found a way past the ex-Leeds man when he bundled home at the far post on 60 minutes and from there, Martin O'Neill's side went all guns blazing.
Lonergan made another two excellent stops as the ball fizzed continuously around the penalty area.
Petrov curled one shot just around the post that might have made the game safe but Sunderland got the equaliser their second-half pressure deserved when Craig Gardner smashed a fearsome effort from the edge of the box to send the 5,000 travelling fans wild.
From there you wondered whether Wanderers would sink without a trace, and they were indebted to Chung-Yong for hooking a late effort from Fletcher off the line to ensure a replay.
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