Sunderland travel to the bet365 Stadium this Saturday to face off against a struggling Stoke side with Alex Neil seemingly just barely clinging onto the managerial position…
SAFC were the victims of a dubious red card that helped contribute to a car-crash 4-0 defeat to Middlesbrough right before the international break and adding to that the fact a lot of our players surely have no love lost for Alex Neil will almost definitely have them fired up.
Meanwhile Stoke look to be a team sleepwalking into yet another lowly bottom half finish, and if it wasn’t for the poor-quality of the three teams in the relegation zone they’d be serious contenders to be featuring in the third tier come August. Nevertheless they’ll certainly be looking over their shoulders.
Sunderland have tended not to do things halfway this season, with just one draw from their 11 league matches so far. There have been three rather comfortable wins for us in the last five games, and if we could have taken our chances against Cardiff it would have easily been at least four. Normally the fact it’s an away game would reduce the expectations of a travelling side, but for Tony Mowbray’s side it’ll be exactly the opposite. Continuing on their good away form from last season, we’ve managed to win three of our five games on the road so far. Last time out we capitulated to Stoke, at home, 5-1 but this time around few will be predicting Alex Neil’s side to come away with even a point.
Stoke meanwhile are in dire form, with just four points from their last five league games and a 2-0 away defeat to Bournemouth in the Carabao Cup mixed into that. This is surely a decisive game for Alex Neil, and should they lose it’ll be hard to see a scenario in which he remains in the dugout. When he went to Stoke, there were talks of them finally mounting a push for promotion after a few years of wallowing away in lower mid table obscurity. Those dreams have been quickly snuffed out however, with just 19 wins in 57 under Neil.
A win for Sunderland could see us climb up to third dependent on results elsewhere, but with seven teams within three points below us this is a crucial game to consolidate our play off position. With almost flawless Leicester (just one narrow 1-0 defeat all season) away up next and then hosting play-off chasing Norwich right after, this is a crucial game and anything less than three points would be highly disappointing.
Stoke also need to win, a defeat could see them sink into the bottom three and should that happen it would be hard to envisage them climbing back out again given the poor mood surrounding the club at the moment. They face Leeds and Middlesbrough after so it’s entirely reasonable to predict that they pick up no points from their next three games.
Both sides have a bit of an injury crisis right now. For Sunderland the likes of Alese, Pritchard, Dack, Evans, Cirkin, Matete and Ekwah all either returning from injury or still injured at the time of writing, and Dan Neil out suspended. Stoke have eight first teamers either doubts or injured, including Lynden Gooch (who has apparently been playing quite well for his new side). Stoke have also recently picked up Ciaran Clark, and it would be typical if he managed to score from a corner against us owing to the fact he’s formerly of Newcastle.
All things considered, this is our game to lose and I can’t see Stoke being up for it. It looks like Neil is on the way out and they have three games they probably won’t get much from coming up. Their players will be demotivated and probably thinking more about who will be leading them come next week rather than playing well under their current boss, their top scorer (Vidigal) is fit though so their goal threat isn’t completely nullified. Mark Travers also isn’t a half-bad goalkeeper either. With our lads wanting to take their anger out given the injustice of the last game and exact revenge on Alex Neil, this game should be a fun one for us if we decide to play half-decently.
