Until nearly midnight (albeit UAE time, four hours ahead of the East Stand), Salut! Sunderland was shortchanging its readers. Sixer’s Sevens stretched to only six words, the first four in the headline plus “equals relegation”. I added “pitiful”. But enough of the fence-sitting; here’s what we actually thought of Sunderland’s performance….
* With acknowledgement to Len Shackleton and the chapter of his autobiography, Clown Prince of Football, entitled “What the average director knows about football”. It famously consists of a single blank page
Alarm bells are beginning to chime.Having been restricted to watching highlights since the Stoke game from my vantage point on my setee things don’t look good.
It is hard to gauge where the problems lie.Well maybe not…the problems seem to lie on that large green area called the pitch.Some of the goals we are losing I would have been ashamed to concede in my playing days.How N’Zogbia managed to run 50 yards with the close attention of 2 defenders and still score just about sums up the shambles that seemed to typify yesterday.
My opinion of where we have disappointed most lies with the strikers.There seems to be a feeling around the SOL that Jones and Cisse can do no wrong.Rarely have I heard critisism of them , most of the critics aim for Collins, Whitehead or Reid.Sadly I think that our attacking duo have been as effective as a chocolate ashtray this season and in most games both would be as well keeping myself or Sixer company in the east stand.Check out our goals scored this season. Only the bottom 3 have score fewer goals than us so far this season.
How we get out of this current lull in our form might be tricky.Our run in is not particuarly difficult but when you produce performances like yesterday against Wigan the games become, well difficult.I still think that 37 points will be enough this season to be safe.Sbragia has to install something into the overpaid nancy boys masquerading in the red and white stripes that may register with them about the seriousness of the situation.
If this side are relegated the players will never be forgiven and I suspect a number of returning and new found fans that have been attending games since Quinn’s takeover will fade into the sunset.The next few weeks will be squeaky bum time unless we improve rapidly.
I am beginning to draw comparisons with the 84-85 season when after looking comfortable in mid-table and reaching a cup final we managed to snatch relegation from the jaws of safety after a quite woeful run, even by our standards of 1 win in our last 12 games.This team are on paper too good for that to happen, surely…….
I’ve never thought I could play better than a whole team, or manage better, but that changed during this game. Dire. Even worse than Southend away(last promotion season) and on that day we were singing ‘not fit to wear the shirt’.