ALL TO PLAY FOR

Sunderland’s embarrassing defeat to Port Vale last weekend crushed the FA Cup dream, which felt like the best opportunity we had to make this season a special one. However, with eight games still to play and only three points behind 8th (which could take a side to European football), there is still everything to play for.

With forty points already nailed, we’d achieved our first objective in the Premier League way ahead of schedule. Safety was almost guaranteed, and a side sat bottom of League One stood between us and an FA Cup Quarter final, and a game away from Wembley. Descending onto Wembley Way for the second time in less than a year was beginning to feel like a real possibility for us, however this time it would be for a semi-final clash in the hopes of winning a major honour, as opposed to a one-off game to return to the Premier League. That would have been a massive sign of how far we’ve came this past year, but Port Vale decided to ruin our dream and progress to only their second ever QF of the FA Cup.

The FA cup felt like an opportunity to achieve something special this season. Back-to-back home defeats ended the undefeated home run in the league to an end, and our recent league form in general has saw us slip down the table and seemingly fade into mid-table obscurity. However, given the sheer number of English clubs who qualify for Europe these days, we’re only a good run of form away from overseas voyages next season, and that would make this season memorable.

The top five are almost guaranteed Champions League football, meaning sixth would be granted Europa League football and seventh would compete in the UEFA Conference League. The winners of the Carabao Cup, however, also gain a spot in the Conference League; the energy drink cup final is due to be played just four hours after a certain Tyne-Wear derby, between Manchester City and Arsenal who are almost guaranteed to be playing in Champions League anyway, meaning the final Conference League spot would go to whoever finishes in 8th…

There’s also a slim possibility that whoever finishes in 9th will gain qualification into Europe, but that would require both English domestic cups to have been won by sides who have already qualified for Europe, and the winner of the Europa or Champions League to be an English side.

Taking a step away from the headache-inducing mathematical equation that I have just presented, we aren’t anywhere near as far away from European football as what we seem to be, given that we’re three points from 8th and 4 points from 7th, which seems astonishing given that we’ve only won two league games since the 2nd of February.

Our next two games could, ultimately, decide how the rest of our season will go, given that there is a three week break after next week's trip to the Visitors, which will hopefully see most of our injured players return in-time for the final six games.

Regis has confirmed that Dennis Cirkin and Brian Brobbey have trained all week and could be available against Brighton, and that Robin Roefs, Nordi Mukiele and Reinildo Mandava are likely to return to full-training next week, and therefore could play in the derby. Bertrand Traore is likely to miss all but the last 2-3 games, having been given a time-scale of 6-8 weeks.

A win at home to Brighton is exactly what we need to lift the mood in camp after a shocking defeat and set us up nicely for the derby eight days later. If we can pick up all three points with limited squad options, like we did away at Leeds, there’s no reason as to why we can’t pick up a result at Newcastle with some of our best players set to return from injury.

We will then have a three week break, owing to the QFs of the cup and an international break, where we will hopefully return with a close-to fully-fit squad against Tottenham Hotspur, who can’t seem to buy a win at the moment…

Anything less than three points across our next two games and we’ll probably be out the picture, three or four keeps us in the conversation, six has us hot on the tails of the likes of Brentford and Everton. With eight games still remaining, everything is still to play for.