It may be a taxing time for Harry Redknapp, but Pete Sixsmith sees his Spurs team show Sunderland exactly what you need to be a Champions League team.
T S Eliot (not a renowned football fan) wrote that “April is the cruellest month”. For Sunderland fans, replace April with February and you have a truism if ever there was one.
February sorts out the teams who will and the teams who won’t. Go into March top of the League, be it FA Premier or Northern, and the chances are that you will finish the season there. Ditto at the bottom.
Hit a slump in February and you can wave goodbye to a top six finish – it happened in 2000 with 2 points out of 9 and again in 2001 with a similar return and with an FA Cup exit thrown in.
This year we have played three games in February and have lost all three. We have scored some good goals, played some neat and tidy football – and have defended like Stockport County on a bad day.