Cats shooting themselves in the foot
Saturday’s failure to beat Charlton Athletic saw Sunderland once again miss an opportunity to get into the automatic promotion places in League One.
With Portsmouth and Luton Town not playing, a victory at The Valley represented a giltedged chance to snatch second place and put the pressure on the other teams around us, rather than playing catch-up constantly.
Luke O’Nien’s superbly-executed volley just two minutes into the clash got the Black Cats off to the best possible start, but once again that performance did not continue beyond the referee’s half-time whistle.
In many ways, this was the mirror image of our first outing against The Addicks this term. In August, it was Charlton out of the blocks quicker and taking full advantage of a less-thanmatch-fit defensive pairing of Alim Ozturk and Glenn Loovens, only to be pegged back and then beaten by two second-half goals.
Thankfully, we did not lose the game, but many supporters will be feeling it was another two points dropped for Jack Ross’ side, seven days on from the failure to beat Shrewsbury Town at the Stadium of Light.
Barring the Portsmouth defeat three days before Christmas, Jack Ross has engineered two wins and two draws from the festive fixtures.
And while this isn’t terrible, there seems to be little momentum for Ross’ side, who are labouring their way to results.
Putting a run of results together is essential for us to truly outline our credentials for promotion back to the Championship at the first time of asking.
Our exit from the FA Cup at the second round stage meant that for the first time in 31 years we were not involved in FA Cup Third Round weekend.
While this is generally disappointing, it ensures there are little distractions to our ultimate goal.
One such distraction comes in the form of the Checkatrade Trophy tomorrow evening. We could do without the game right now and we could certainly do without it being against Newcastle United.
Hopefully, the event will pass off peacefully and we can dispatch their young team in a professional manner.
Right now, the league is the most important show in town. Results from the last few weeks have shown supporters it isn’t the procession they may have once thought it was.
We are going to have to fight and scrap our way out of this division. We have steamrollered sides with scintillating football like we did against Scunthorpe United and the first half against Barnsley.
But teams generally get themselves out of this division by being organised, hard to beat. There is room for both, of course, but results are the most important thing.
Anything else and we could be looking at another year in this league.