After defeat to Stoke, the gap to 2nd place is up to five points. The squad is looking thin, our defensive displays are declining, it feels like reality has started to hit more of the Sunderland faithful. Could this season be a real big opportunity that we could end up missing out on?
After the absolutely calamitous way last season fizzled out for the Black Cats, the start to this season was a sigh of relief for the fanbase. That to me though is starting to feel a bit distant, three wins in our last twelve is grim reading, even if seven of those are draws so it’s not all bad. However, out of those seven draws, we have conceded goals after the 80th minute in three of them. Both loses in those twelve games were due to late goals. What is the issue, mentality maybe? Are we switching off? I would say for Cannon’s goal for Stoke, almost certainly. Are we starting to look fatigued? I would again probably say yes.
One of my main concerns has been that we have not really comfortably beaten anyone for some time. Oxford was the last time we looked at ease when winning and even that was only 2-0 despite dominating the whole game. We are making games hard for ourselves week in week out at the minute, even when we are winning. Be it overcomplicating attacks, wrong decision making, trying to be too clever. Defensively we are having to scramble like Sunday league teams to get the ball out, with schoolboy errors at important times in the game. It feels like ages since we have conceded a wonder strike of a goal, they are all scrappy avoidable goals.
The main topic I want to focus on is that I fear we may miss out on a great opportunity to go up this season. It is our 3rd year in the league now and this season, the overall strength of the Championship is by far the weakest I have seen. Looking at the top, there’s no 2022/23 Burnley or 23/24 Leicester running away with it. There’s not even an Ipswich or a team like that who are also flying. The all-round quality from top to bottom just is not there and, although I think we are doing really well, I include Sunderland in this. We have looked off the pace for a few weeks and have not really gotten close to the exciting high-tempo play from the first few weeks of the season. Obviously, injuries are a factor in this which is what makes January so important. This season is our best opportunity to get out of this league, so if we can add more strength in the upcoming window I still believe Regis Le Bris can guide us back to the Premier League this season, even if that is through the play-offs. We just need to back him in the market as he clearly does not trust the players on the bench which is starting to become detrimental to our performances in the latter stages of games.
At Blackburn the opposition used all five of their available subs, while our single substitution only happened when Chris Rigg was forced off. In another world, we would maybe have three or four quality options from the bench which would give opposing teams something extra to think about and make us a little more dynamic, rather than seeing tired legs as we struggle to contain teams in the last ten minutes of every match.
If we do not take advantage of this opportunity this year, we may live to regret it.
