KEEP THE FAITH

After suffering our joint-highest defeat of the season away to Brentford, Sunderland extended our winless run to five games. Whilst it’s easy to become frustrated at the lack of points and some poor performances, we have to cut the Lads a bit of slack and keep on believing…

Before a ball was kicked this season, 3-0 defeats were the type of results that we were expecting to suffer all the time, however tonight’s result marks only the second defeat by more than a two goal deficit.

If someone had offered us five league defeats at this stage of the season, before it all began, we’d have bitten their hands off. Whilst we’d much rather reserve our larger defeats for games against the best few teams in the league, Brentford away goes down statistically as one of the toughest fixtures of the campaign. The Bee’s have now picked up six wins and three draws at The G-Tech Community Stadium, and are fourth in the table for results at home.

What’s more is that we went into this game with a very stretched squad. That was our fourth game in eleven days, all of which we’ve been missing at least six players for. We knew instantly that December and the AFCON period was going to be our toughest stage of the season. To have drawn all but one of the games, therefore, that all of the AFCON contingent would be unavailable for, is an outcome that we surely all would have taken, including a draw and clean sheet at home to Man City to ensure we remain undefeated at the SoL in the Premier League so far this season.

With the lack of options available, Regis Le Bris has had his hands tied and has likely been selecting his starting eleven predominately based on who is fit, as opposed to what the best possible side would be to take on the game, which is one of his key traits as a head coach. The decision to play Chris Rigg on the wing tonight was likely one stemming from the need to rotate, as opposed to genuinely wanting to play the eighteen year old out of his favoured position. Mayenda looked threatening and hungry against Man City on New Years Day, however his lack of first team minutes was evident as he offered us less as the game grew old, as well as failing to impact the game largely away at Spurs. If he’d started at Brentford too, that would have been his third start in seven days. Previously, the Spaniard had only started three games all season, and they all came in August.

Dennis Cirkin has performed exceptionally well during this period, starting three games in a row and looking completely comfortable against Man City in particular. One major positive from losing the AFCON boys has to be that we now know that he is more than good enough to be a reliable back-up option to Reinildo, which isn’t something that we had full confidence in before our marra from Mozambique left us to represent his country. He was benched last night, as is to be excepted from someone who has just played three full games, after having not even made the bench prior.

Enzo Le Fee’s penalty was met with a lot of criticism on-line; attempting to panenka a penalty whilst 1-0 down away from home and missing is bound to be met with negative attention, however I’m sure that if he’d had scored it, we’d all be praising the audacity to attempt such a finish, and the confidence that requires. The Frenchman has taken to the Premier League like a duck to water and been pivotal as we’ve batted through a tough period over the last month, playing in various positions and demonstrating his work ethic in every game.

His penalty miss was probably the catalyst of our downfall, instead of being the momentum swing that could have catapulted us into the lead - as it was in August when we came from behind to beat Brentford. With that being said, we have to put it behind us and move on. Everyone makes mistakes, and there’s no point singling out one single player for a three-nil defeat.

We can now be thankful that we don’t have a league game for another ten days, which is the exact type of break that our lads need to recuperate and be ready to pick our form back up, as we welcome Crystal Palace to the Stadium of Light on the 17th of January. Before then, however, comes a trip to Everton for the 3rd round of the FA cup; whilst it hasn’t come at a great time for us, we can take solace in the fact that we can play a rotated side, as is usually the case with early-round cup games. We also now welcome back Reinildo Mandava, Noah Sadiki, Arthur Masuaku and Bertrand Traore to the squad, following their respective side’s exits from AFCON, for this fixture.

Should Senegal and Morocco fail to progress to the semi-final, we will also see the return of Habib Diarra and Chemsdine Talbi to the fold for the Crystal Palace clash.

We are only so disappointed at the drop off in performances, as well as recent poor away form, due to the incredibly high expectations that we’ve set; we have managed to get through the period of fixtures that everyone said would see us crash and burn reasonably well, and things can only get better as we see a return of one-game-weeks, as well as some of our most important players.

We’ve also seen, on many occasions, how well Le Bris responds to poor performances and defeats; we typically always see drastic improvements the game after a loss, and I have full confidence in him and the lads to put it right in the next game.

We’ve already achieved so much this season and continue to prove everyone wrong. We may have dropped more points than we’d like recently, but it was to be expected with the fixtures presented to us and the lack of options at Le Bris’ disposal. We’ve now gotten through the toughest stage of the season on paper with 30 points to our name and seventeen games left. For a side who would have defied the odds simply just by staying up, we definitely have a team to be proud of. Onto the next one, and keep the faith…