Sunderland ended a three-game losing streak with a 1-1 draw at the Vitality Stadium, with Evanilsson coming off the bench to cancel out Eliezer Mayenda’s opener and save Bournemouth a point.
Mayenda gave his side a well-deserved lead in the first half, with Petrovic converting Khabib Diarra’s powerful shot into the goal.
But Evanilsson set up Marcus Tavernier’s supercross for a second-half equalizer, keen to maintain Bournemouth’s eight-game unbeaten run.
Sunderland returned Granit Xhaka to the team after missing seven games due to injury and went into the opening game in high spirits, but in retrospect they will probably feel that they were in trouble after being denied a penalty early on.
With three minutes remaining, Alex Jimenez made a clumsy challenge on Enzo Le Fee inside the area, but Jared Gillett waved him away. VAR deemed the tackle to be “normal contact” and withheld an on-field decision.
Sunderland, also looking for their first away win since October, came close to scoring a second goal, but a super save from Petrovic denied Diarra a one-on-one.
But minutes later Evanilsson, who came on for David Brooks during the half-time interval, scored, denying Sunderland any chance of leapfrogging the Cherries.
Instead, Bournemouth remain in 8th place and Sunderland in 11th. However, after this round of games is completed, with games before and after, Bournemouth could drop to 11th place and Sunderland could finish in 13th place.
Le Bris: I’m happy with the team spirit that stopped us conceding goals.
Sunderland manager Regis Le Bris:
“It’s a good point after a losing streak. We know how tough, unforgiving and demanding this league is and when you start losing, it’s hard to break the dynamic.
“This is a tough place. They are an intense, duel-driven, sprinting team. It’s important to match this intensity and we showed this character, resilience and cohesion.”
“We had a good period of quality. Probably not enough to score another goal, but I’m especially happy with the team spirit.”
Iraora: We paid the price for the slow start.
Bournemouth manager Andoni Iraola:
“We paid for the late start. We scored the first goal. We improved after that and came closest to winning in the second half.”
“But today we paid the price with two points because of the way we entered the game.”
On Evanilsson’s goal: “It was a great cross, great finish. But for me it was Ryan Christie who scored the goal. We need to take these kinds of free-kicks quickly.
“We lost a lot of time preparing for the first half, and they lost an incredible amount of time with every free kick. And if we don’t take them quickly, the game gets very boring and there’s no rhythm to the game. We made the decision to take them quickly and play and put some tempo into the game, and I’m very happy with that.”
