Bottom-place Sunderland wins first match of EPL season

BOURNEMOUTH, England (AP) — Victor Anichebe inspired bottom-place Sunderland to its first success in the English Premier League at the 11th attempt, scoring the opener and winning a penalty to beat Bournemouth 2-1 on Saturday.

Anichebe, whose only notable contribution this season had been a Twitter gaffe after the recent defeat at West Ham, was handed a first league start by under-pressure manager David Moyes.

And the striker responded with his first goal in 18 months, to cancel out Dan Gosling's opener, before winning the penalty that Jermain Defoe dispatched.

The win was all the more remarkable given Sunderland's Steven Pienaar was sent off with half an hour to go for a challenge on Junior Stanislas.

"It is only one win. We need two, we need to just keep picking up the points," Moyes said. "Hopefully it will show people there is a great spirit and commitment among the players and desire to do well.

"We went to a factory this week, showing the players it is much better to be a footballer than working in a factory."

Last month, Anichebe took to Twitter to issue a rallying cry to Sunderland's fans during the team's difficult spell. However, embarrassingly, he appeared to simply copy and paste a tweet that he was told to write by a club official, saying: "Can you tweet something like 'Unbelievable support yesterday and great effort by the lads! Hard result to take! But we go again!'"

Anichebe deleted the tweet, but not before it was spread.

"Victor Anichebe was terrific today," Moyes said. "He has an awful lot going for him and his all-round performance was terrific."