Butland’s bubbling
HISTORY CALLS FOR THE BLUEBIRDS
STEFAN SCHWARTZ believes Sunderland can pull off a Great Escape.
The Black Cats hammered promotionchasing Derby 4-1 on Friday night to move off the bottom of the Championship.
It was only the second victory of 2018 for Chris Coleman’s side, a result which ended a winless run of 10 games and took them above Burton.
But now former club favourite Schwartz (above) is calling on the Black Cats to show more of that spirit to avoid a humiliating plunge into League One.
Sunderland take on Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow on Wearside and know that another victory can give them the impetus to stay up. And the Swede, who had a fouryear spell at the club, said: “They have to believe the Great Escape is possible.
“Chris Coleman is a confident guy and now it’s more important than ever that the players and the supporters are with him.
“They need to fill the stadium now and get results. And it does not matter how they get them.
“You want to play nice football but that’s no longer important – they just need points and they need them very quickly.
“There are still points to play CALLUM PATERSON is more concerned with earning points than plaudits as Neil Warnock’s men bid to write their name into the history books.
A win at Warnock’s (right) old club tomorrow night will see the Welsh side equal a 71-year club record, and cement their second place in the Championship. Paterson said: for and the supporters have a big role to play. It’s a massive club and there’s still a possibility that they can get out of it.
“The players have to fight – not just for themselves, they have to understand the responsibility they have to the club and the surrounding area.
“Nothing is impossible but the players just can’t wait for it to happen, they have to make it happen.”
Schwartz was part of a side that no team in the top flight looked forward to facing, but there has been precious little fight at the Stadium of Light since Sunderland’s relegation from the Premier League.
The former midfielder added: “It didn’t matter whether it was Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United, we didn’t care who it was, we were in their faces. We weren’t intimidated by anyone.”
Sunderland have won just two matches at the Stadium of Light so far this season, the first of which didn’t arrive until December 16.
That was the club’s first home win in 2017 – and ended a miserable wait of 364 days.
A statistic like “It’s a great feeling to be a part of a team who are doing really well and scoring a lot of goals. That’s all we are thinking about, nothing else.”
The Bluebirds can all but end any hopes of snatching an automatic promotion spot.
Fulham could potentially be 10 points off by the time they face
on Tuesday and will then that would have been unthinkable for a side that contained the likes of Schwartz, Kevin Phillips and Niall Quinn in the late 90s and early Noughties.
The Stadium of Light was a cauldron of noise when over 45,000 Sunderland fans poured into the ground to watch Peter Reid’s team play.
Phillips scored 30 goals in the 1999/00 season to pick up European football’s Golden Boot.
Compare that to this season, when Coleman’s side have averaged just a goal a game before the Easter round of matches.
“Goals have been a big problem,” says Schwartz.
“But the least the supporters deserve is players giving 100 per cent – that’s what they demand and if you do that at Sunderland then the fans will back you.
“Confidence is obviously a problem because they haven’t been winning games, but it’s now at the stage where you have to forget everything that has happened before.
“When you have a bad time you have to work twice as hard as a side – and I hope the players are ready to do just that.” have one eye on the play-offs. Play-off candidates will be anxiously looking over their shoulders, with an eight-game winless run coming at the worst possible time. After being booed off following their 4-1 home hammering to struggling Rams defender Curtis Davies said: “We have to put it right as it’s about time we got back on the board and started winning games. We can’t rely on other teams to drop points to stay in the top six.”
who have their own play-off aspirations, are next up.
They join who occupy the final play-off spot, BRISTOL CITY, SHEFFIELD UNITED and MILLWALL in bidding to extend their season.