Sunderland made an emphatic statement at the Stadium Of Light on Tuesday night.

Victory over Ipswich Town at the weekend cemented the Black Cats' place as genuine promotion contenders but that would have meant nothing if they didn't follow it up with a victory over Rochdale.

The Wearsiders were heavy favourites for the clash with the League One strugglers and they looked every bit the third-tier's heavyweights as they swept them aside with a 3-0 victory.

The opening 30 minutes put the game firmly to bed with Sunderland scoring all three of their goals in half an hour, meaning that the rest of the game was played at little more than a canter.

Phil Parkinson's entire team deserve credit for such a performance, but it'd hard not to single out one man in particular for his starring role in the one-sided victory.

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We took to Wyscout to assess the numbers behind the 24-year-old's performance.Lynden Gooch scored two goals for the Black Cats on their way to victory, but his performances was about so much more than those two strikes.

There were several Sunderland stars who really impressed against Rochdale.

The visitors operated with a 4-4-2 diamond formation which left them painfully over-exposed in wide areas of the pitch.

Luke O'Nien and Denver Hume did well well to exploit this space, while Chris Maguire operated with real intelligence to operate between the central defender and the full-backs to cause real panic in the Rochdale defence.

However it was Lynden Gooch who was the most impressive.

The American scored two goals from three shots on goal, but that was only the start of his contribution.

Phil Parkinson has drilled his team on working with a high-intensity pressing game which is used to put the opposition under pressure.

Rochdale persisted with playing out from the back during the opening stages but this merely prompted unnecessary pressure from the Sunderland forward line - and most notably Lynden Gooch.

The 24-year-old worked tirelessly to put 16-year-old defender Luke Matheson under the cosh, and this led to several opening for the Black Cats' academy graduate to flourish.

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Gooch made an impressive three recoveries in the Rochdale half, while also completing two successful dribbles and boasting a 70% pass accuracy.

His brace on the night was not down to good fortune, but more the relentless pressing that he inflicted on the Rochdale defence which gave him opportunities to make things happen on the ball, but also led to the opposition defence being caught out of position, leading to gaps for his teammates to run in to.

Lynden Gooch will have much tougher tests in the weeks to come, but if he can maintain these fundamentals of working hard to create openings then he's almost guaranteed to carve out more goalscoring opportunities before the end of the season.