Everyone’s talking about Sunderland’s new small pitch as football season kicks off

The wait is over: the new football season is under way.

With the Premier League set for the big kick off in just over a week, the 2017/18 Championship campaign began at the Stadium of Light on Friday evening as Sunderland hosted Derby. As was to be expected for the home side, it's been a summer of change since Sunderland dropped out of the top flight. Simon Grayson has replaced David Moyes as manager and a number of last year's first team squad - including top scorer Jermain Defoe - will begin the new season with new clubs. As was pointed out by plenty of those that tuned in for Sky Sports' coverage of the game, there was also a very noticeable change to size of the Sunderland pitch, which appeared to have been shortened and narrowed. Along with many of those pointing this out... https://twitter.com/racheltarbuck/status/893544668125954049 https://twitter.com/_mr_chips_/status/893544349337661440 https://twitter.com/WaspBoro/status/893548181300142081 https://twitter.com/cheekyrob83/status/893547365482758145 https://twitter.com/WTownsley/status/893546877869842433 ...some put forward theories as to why the the decision to redo the pitch markings had been made... https://twitter.com/paul_stanhope/status/893548214716071936 https://twitter.com/jonawils/status/893526434135912448 Although not confirmed, the Roker Report blog suggests that the change may have been requested by Grayson following the 5-0 preseason defeat to Celtic which took place on the originally-marked pitch last week. This was also suggested by Sky's commentary team during the first half.