The most important point to be made about tomorrow night’s game at the Spotland Stadium is that we must aim to remain unbeaten.
But a draw would be a disappointment. Sunderland really need to maintain the momentum, indeed the winning feeling, after a comfortable league cup visit to Accrington Stanley and a gritty home victory over much-fancied League One promotion rivals.
The spirit that helped secure the three points against Pompey, plus the quality that Jack Ross has in his squad, should in theory be enough to bring us a first away win in the game at Rochdale, against whom we achieved a league double last season.
They have had a more or less identical start to the League One campaign, two draws and a win and a goal difference of one.
You tell us how it will go.
Thank you to all the @SunderlandAFC fans for turning up in huge numbers again and sticking with us even when we went behind. You make a huge difference and have a massive part to play. On to Rochdale – see as many of you there Tuesday as I can. ???????
— stewart donald (@stewartdonald3) August 17, 2019
Salut! Sunderland‘s costly recent technical upgrade – the alternative to the enhanced security of becoming https://safc.blog (http seems to be an open door to hackers and spammers) was probably extinction – make it impossible to run prize competitions just now.
But make a prediction all the same. And here’s hoping one of those going for an away win gets the scoreline right.
Got to think a game we should win with relative ease, it doesn’t always end up like that but if we have any chance of automatic promotion we need to win these away games.
The eternal optimist says that grigg will shine and have his scoring boots on fower nowt to the lads
The Lads to win 3-2 and hopefully into a top six spot.
With McNulty out we’ll need Maguire to do the harrying and chasing. I expect Wyke to start if fully fit but I’d love this game to be the one where Will Grigg finally lights the blue touch paper. I watched the U23s on Sunday and though I bet there will be a clamour for Ross to give Kimpioka a chance from those who haven’t seen that much of him, to my eyes he doesn’t look ready to become a regular in the first team yet.
It will be interesting to see what sort of team Ross goes with, but I can’t see many changes from Saturday, other than Wyke for McNulty. We’ll need Gooch, Power and McGeady at their attacking best and O’Nien and McLaughlin to get into the box whenever they can to put pressure on the Dale defence.
Could be tight for a long period but I’ll go 3-0 with two late goals sealing the three points. Power, Maguire and Grigg.
2-1 to Rochdale, worked last time.
1-0 to the Lads. We should win automatic promotion this season.
Still giddy from the Pompey game I feel nothing but unbridled confidence in our keeping our first clean sheet in a game of two halves, both of which are ours.
0 – 2 to the lads to begin our push for the top.
Rochdale 1 -3 Sunderland, a hat trick of wins, but no hat trick on the day or clean sheet, still some snagging to do but all going in the right direction.
2-1 to Safc. No clean sheet yet….we’ll save that for the next home game. Wyke and Gooch to score. Consolation late goal for the Dale