A raucous Stadium of Light crowd spurred Sunderland on in the early stages, and perhaps that atmosphere got the better of Boro stopper Zack Steffen, whose misplaced clearance gifted Amad Diallo a golden chance to open the scoring.
However, the Manchester United loanee passed up that opportunity to strike an early blow, against a somewhat underwhelming Boro side looking far from the team that had averaged 2.2 points per game in manager Michael Carrick’s first ten league outings.
Overall, Boro were arguably lucky to reach the half-hour mark level, enduring a major scare when the offside flag spared Steffen’s blushes, after he spilled an effort at the feet of Ross Stewart.
He subsequently fired home, only for his celebrations to be cut short. Such was the visitors’ lack of composure on Wearside, it took Boro 35 minutes to finally register a meaningful effort on goal, but when Marcus Forss unleashed from the edge of the area, it needed a solid stop from Anthony Patterson to ensure the scores remained level at the break.
Boro clearly hadn’t learned from their first-half failings, and Sunderland finally made their pressure pay shortly after the interval.
It was a double whammy for Boro too, as Stewart was hauled down in the area when racing through on goal by Fry, who was dismissed for his troubles, before Sunderland’s leading scorer dusted himself home to fire home the rebound after Steffen saved his initial effort.
Now with a numerical disadvantage, Boro unsurprisingly struggled to wrestle control of the game, though they did manage to manufacture a couple of sightings of goal, the best of which fell to Hayden Hackney, but his effort from the edge of the area flew over the bar.
Having missed a golden opportunity in the first half, Diallo was in no mood to spurn another as he twisted and turned in the area before slamming home Sunderland’s second of the afternoon.
That strike was met with all due delirium across the Stadium of Light, and put the game beyond any reasonable doubt, emphatically ending Boro’s four match winning league run.
So too did it destroy the visitors’ hopes of matching their longest unbeaten streak in this fixture since an eight-game run between 1953-1960, while allowing Sunderland to close the gap behind their North-East neighbours to just a single point.