Travelling home after Saturday’s game was a mixture of elation and trepidation. After 8 games, Sunderland sit 7th in the Premier League and there is much to celebrate.
There have been a couple of disappointing
performances at Burnley and Manchester United but at no point has this side looked like it did not belong at this level.
The summer reconstruction of the squad has provided a rock-solid and talented defence that has conceded just 6 goals – only Arsenal have conceded fewer. The midfield has a mixture of Granit-hardened experience, coupled with youthful exuberance, and our Championship strikers are proving they can score at a higher level, with the service provided by our new wingers.
Critics would point out that every team we have played currently sit below us in the league. Yes, West Ham, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Wolves may currently be underperforming compared to last season but they are no more pushovers than Crystal Palace and Brentford were.
Crucially the Stadium of Light is becoming a fortress where no opposing team will look forward to playing. Taking 10 points from a possible 12 in home games has already set down a marker – with a raucous crowd behind them, this side won’t be rolling out the red carpet (or redecorating the Black Cats bar) for anyone this season.
There are no easy games in the Premier League and it is to the enormous credit of the coaching team and the playing staff that we currently occupy such a lofty position. But life in the Premier League is about to get a lot more real.
A look at the fixtures between now and Christmas is not for the faint-hearted!
Chelsea, Everton, Arsenal, Fulham, Bournemouth, Liverpool, Manchester City, Newcastle and Brighton are games that will inevitably test the mettle of Régis Le Bris’ newly – flourishing squad. AFCON will add in a further complication, with some of the new generation of stars being whisked away at a time when they will be most sorely needed in the North East.
We will be taking on some of the established ‘big guns’ of the Premier League, together with some of the teams whose models of sustainability we are seeking to emulate. The next nine fixtures collectively present a very different challenge to the one we have faced in our first eight matches.
The teams we are facing are enjoying far more positive starts than most of our opponents so far. Our squad may be expensively assembled, compared to previous Sunderland sides, but some of the players who will take the field against us have individual price tags that almost match our total expenditure.
So this is going to be a period when the whole club needs to come together. As a collective unit, this is a team which will not give goals away easily but we will be facing players who have the capability to unlock the most resilient of defences. There will be games where it will happen and how we react, as fans, will play a big part in helping our players to respond. There should be no place for the tiny minority of the fanbase who revel in making edgy posts on social media, writing off players who have so far had little opportunity to demonstrate what they are actually capable of.
We are also less of a surprise package now. Our overhaul of the playing staff gave opponents thus far little opportunity to effectively prepare for this version of Sunderland. That advantage is pretty much gone – the teams we will face now have 8 games worth of evidence for their teams of analysts to study, to identify any weaknesses that may have gone unexploited to date.
There are likely to be times when Bob Marley’s ‘Three little birds’ will be sung more than ‘Paint your wagon’ but isn’t that why we all wanted to be back in the Premier League? To test ourselves against the best teams in England, and to hopefully re – establish Sunderland back in the top tier?
It would be an incredible achievement if, in the next 9 games, we could accrue anything like the number of points that we have in the first eight. Yet I do believe that this squad of players has the capability not only to compete with, but to genuinely surprise some of the opponents on our immediate horizon.
But, however the results go, we need to stick together, to get fully behind Régis Le Bris and the whole squad, and to play our part in lifting the team when the going gets tough.
