Sunderland’s Bailey Wright fires warning to Tigers and Posh

SUNDERLAND have refused to concede that the League One title promotion race is a foregone conclusion, according to defender Bailey Wright.

The Black Cats failed to close the gap on league leaders Hull City and second-placed Peterborough United on Tuesday when they were beaten 2-1 at relegation-threatened Wigan Athletic.

That damaging defeat, a second successive for Lee Johnson’s Wearsiders, left them eight points adrift of the Tigers and five behind Posh, though they do have one remaining game in hand on City and a visit to the KCOM Stadium to look forward to on Tuesday.

“Externally, people will say what they say,” a defiant Wright said.

“If that’s what you believe, that it’s a two horse race with them, then that’s your opinion.

“I don’t agree with that - I think we’ve still got a good position, there’s a few games of football left and we all know football, it’s full of twists and turns.”

Sunderland face the first of two games with in-form Blackpool this weekend, making the journey to Bloomfield Road ten days before the Seasiders travel to the Stadium of Light for the return fixture.

Wright says his teammates should embrace the challenge of being involved in the race for automatic promotion

“We’ve got to enjoy it, embrace it, and we will. We’ve got ourselves in a good position, but we’ve got to be the ones to make it happen, and we know that.

“There are some good sides in this division, some good sides above us, some good sides below us, but a lot can happen. So let’s see what happens.”

“Now it’s up to us to show character, rebuild and get ready to go again.

“We’ve still got ourselves in a great position, we know what we’re capable of and regardless of when we win or lose we stick together and build, and that’s what we’ve got to keep doing.

“But we have a great opportunity to regroup, rebuild and show our character and strengths, which we have done all season.

“There’s no doubt that we’ve got that, and we fell short. We hold our hands up, we’re an honest group who want to be successful and we get ready to go again.”

Johnson has been critical of his players following the last two performances, but Wright says the spirit in the camp remains strong going into the final six games.

“Our internal atmosphere hasn’t changed at all,” he said.

“Maybe externally, but I don’t look too much into that.

“I know that you control the controllable that’s inside our environment. Of course you want to win football matches and the last two games we haven’t, that’s the facts.

“But we’ve showed character coming from behind and winning games, we’ve showed character in our defending keeping clean sheets and scoring goals.

“That’s in us, we know that, and it’s down to us to bring that out.

“It’s our responsibility to make things happen.

“The atmosphere when you lose is always not nice, but this is football and you’re going to lose some games. It kills you when you do lose, it hurts, which it should do.

“But our atmosphere doesn’t change, our mentality day to day has been great.”