Another international break is here, but has it come at the wrong time for Sunderland? We looked closer to our best, and the bite, fight and desire from last season were back for the much-needed win over Chelsea. The sense of relief from the players and coaching staff was clear to see, and the pressure has been eased on Régis Le Bris for a few weeks at least.
The question is now, though: have Sunderland finally clicked, and can we kick on and maintain that consistency as we head into a hectic Christmas
schedule? So, what lies ahead in the run-up to Christmas for Sunderland?
There are, of course, no easy games in the Premier League, but a more favourable run of fixtures would be ideal timing for Sunderland, though the fixture computer was not so kind. A return to action sees us travel to Villa Park, where we put in one of our best away displays last season in an enthralling seven-goal thriller. It was a game which, on a different day, would have seen us escape with three points, but, as is so often the case in the Premier League, the fine margins that we were so often the beneficiaries of last season were the deciding factor.
An inspired comeback saw us score twice in two minutes to make it 3-3 after the game looked dead and buried two minutes after half-time. A miss from Diarra was punished a minute later as Tammy Abraham scrambled home a winner. Villa, of course, went on to win the Europa League in Istanbul in the summer and have much bigger fish to fry this season, with a Champions League campaign well underway.
Despite inexplicably throwing away two points away at Old Trafford on Sunday, Villa have still made a steady start to the season under the stewardship of Unai Emery, who is somewhat of a European specialist, having won the Europa League with three different clubs. They sit bang in the middle of the table with three wins, four draws and three defeats.
They, of course, possess vast quality across the pitch, but in particular captain John McGinn, who is in his ninth season at the club and has been a stalwart every season since his transfer from Hibernian in 2018. He tore us apart in last season’s fixture, and Villa will be looking for him to produce a similar level of performance.
They lost Morgan Rogers for a record fee for a British player and Youri Tielemans on a free to United over the summer, and will be looking to fill the gaping hole this leaves in their side. Their main source of goals departed in the summer, with Ollie Watkins making a big-money move to Saudi Arabia, and his £60 million replacement, Nicholas Jackson, already has nine goals in 14 games and will look to be a thorn in our side.
Despite the attacking threat they possess, they leak goals frequently. They’ve kept a clean sheet in only three games this season, which will be in part due to the loss of Ezri Konsa to Arsenal. Sunderland can exploit their weaknesses, and if Brobbey is in the same mood he was against Chelsea, he could have a field day. This will be another major test for Sunderland, who have looked fairly abject on the road this season and have struggled for goals from open play.
European nights under the Lights return once more to the SoL with our penultimate home game in the Europa League phase. Polish side Jagiellonia Białystok visit the Stadium of Light, looking to keep their slim qualification hopes alive. They currently sit mid-table in the Polish Premier League and have lost three out of their four Europa League games, with their only win coming against Ararat Armenia. Young Slovenian striker Nik Prelec is their top scorer across all competitions with four goals.
This will be a great opportunity for our ‘B’ team to get a run-out. This team has impressed in the cup, seeing off Brentford emphatically and comfortably breezing past Hull in the EFL Cup. Many of these lads are yet to earn the full trust of Régis Le Bris, but some will not be far off a place in the Premier League squad after some promising displays from Methalie and Tuterov in particular.
Jules Ahoka has surely shown enough in his brief cameos and his dominant performance against Chelsea to get a sustained run in the team. Could his physical presence in midfield be what unlocks Sunderland going forward?
A win would see us all but qualified for the knockout phase, with 12 points being the typical threshold for automatic qualification for the knockout phase since the new format was rolled out for European competitions.
The stakes ramp up further from here, with arguably the best run of games of the season. We host Tottenham in front of the Sky cameras on the last weekend of November. A £300 million rebuild and a full pre-season for the exuberant Roberto De Zerbi have seen a rejuvenated Tottenham start the season in 12th.
What makes this match-up particularly interesting is the all-Dutch battle between Van de Ven and Van Hecke up against fellow Dutchman Brian Brobbey.
Both are elite-level centre-backs in their own right, but having spent the past couple of years training with Brobbey in the Dutch national team camps, this will make for a fascinating battle. Add in the experience of Andy Robertson, too, and it will arguably provide the biggest test so far for our forward line.
Spurs are a typical De Zerbi team that likes to play out from the back and create chances through high-risk, high-reward possession-based football. Mohammed Kudus, Mathys Tel and Dominic Solanke all have the individual quality to hurt any defence on their day, and Spurs have an xG of 12.4 across the season so far. Will a lack of European football and a less congested fixture schedule have some part to play in this fixture, too?
A similar set-up to the Chelsea game will go a long way towards nullifying the individual quality Tottenham have. Can Régis Le Bris muster up a performance full of aggression, hunger and desire? Can our aggressive press force a few individual errors from the Tottenham backline? We took four points off Spurs last season, too, so they will undoubtedly want to show that they are not the same team we faced last season.
We follow this with a trip to Anfield, almost exactly a year to the day since our last visit, when we were devastated to walk away with only a point, such was the nature of the performance.
Having taken the reins from Arne Slot in the summer, Andoni Iraola is still yet to fully win over the Anfield faithful. Similar to his predecessor, too many draws have stuttered Liverpool’s start to the season, and they find themselves in fourth, nine points behind leaders Arsenal. A team with a £500 million attack should easily be in contention for the title, and Iraola will certainly be feeling the pressure to get a tune out of this attack if performances and results don’t improve.
Any betting man would fancy Alexander Isak to bag a goal now he has stayed injury-free and is showing why Liverpool paid £120 million for his signature. The most obvious threat comes from free-kick specialist Dominik Szoboszlai. I don’t think there has ever been a better striker of the ball in the Premier League in the past decade, so we will do well not to concede any set-pieces in and around our 18-yard box.
The pressure will be on Liverpool for this game, and this usually suits us down to the ground, especially when we are not expecting to see much of the ball. Although our off-the-ball structure has left a lot to be desired this season, the Chelsea performance showed signs that this was starting to go in the right direction and could well be the difference between coming away from Anfield with some points and leaving empty-handed.
We then make the 12-mile journey up the A1 to St James’ Park, a place where we have such a good record that it almost feels like a second home to us. They are also suffering from a stuttering start to the season as they are in the midst of another rebuild. They are yet to find their feet, and their £268 million worth of summer signings are yet to properly gel.
This is likely to be an eyesore for any neutral watching on Sky, not just because of what is at stake but also because of the lack of quality that has been shown by both sides this season. As ever, this fixture will be a game of fine margins and moments. We responded well and matched the occasion in both fixtures last season, and the experience within the squad should get us over the line in a ferocious wall of noise.
Last season, we had a depleted squad and came away with three points to take back down the motorway. This was a rare away performance where we looked to get on the ball and make things happen rather than our usual counter-attacking game plan away from home. Looking at the visitors’ set-up early in the season, our usual counter-attacking game plan could work wonders.
Finally, Milan away at the soon-to-be-demolished San Siro is the stuff of dreams. This is something that seemed a world away in the days of League One, and even in our first season back in the Prem, this never really seemed like a realistic possibility until the middle of March.
This is a full-circle moment after years of taunting from our black-and-white counterparts, who bizarrely seem to think a Mackem has never been to Milan. What makes this even sweeter is the fact that the six points Newcastle gave us last season played a big part in our qualification for Europe. Never mind one Mackem; there are likely to be over 10,000 Mackems making the trip to Italy.
It is moments like this when the result becomes almost irrelevant. This is truly a once-in-a-generation trip, and the scramble for tickets will be carnage. This is not just a once-in-a-generation trip for many supporters, but also for a lot of the playing squad.
After getting hooked 45 minutes into his debut for the club at home to Charlton in League One, I can’t imagine that Luke O’Nien would have thought it was a realistic possibility that he would potentially lead us out at the San Siro. This is not just a testament to Luke as a player and how he has bounced back from this and continued to grow with us, but it also puts into perspective the job that Kyril Louis-Dreyfus has done since walking through the doors at the Academy of Light for the first time.
A busy schedule awaits Régis and his players, and he will no doubt have to use the depth of the squad as he balances two different competitions, with multiple three-game weeks and flights to Europe sandwiched in there, too. Whatever happens, it will be an entertaining month in the run-up to Christmas, and it will be interesting to see what we come out with at the end of it.
