If you lose three games on the bounce – regardless of who those games are against – there’s going to be a change in the mood around the camp. If the fans are feeling tense and tetchy, you can imagine that the players are too.
The defeat to Fulham was demoralising, but not as demoralising as losing a bunch of important players to injuries during the game. It looks like Jocelin Ta Bi and Romaine Mundle could be out for a while with issues that may require surgery, whilst Brian Brobbey and Nordi Mukiele
will likely miss the next two or three games through the injuries that they sustained.
In the cases of Brobbey and Mukiele, both men have become incredibly important to us, and how we adapt to life without them is going to be interesting. There are worse positions to be in than bringing in a Dutch international in place of Nordi, so it’s not all bad, but the striking position has been pretty much nailed down by big Bri, and it’ll be a straight shootout between Mayenda and Isidor to see who gets a run up top.
That said, it’s not all doom and gloom. We’ve finally got Granit Xhaka and Bertrand Traoré back in the mix, and given that both players have been vitally important to us this season, they’ll offer a great deal of what we’ve been missing in recent weeks.
We can’t just sit around, moping and whinging. It’s shit that our form has taken a dip, but the only way things change is if we embrace our current situation, roll up our sleeves, and crack on. That goes for both the fans and the players, because we’re all feeling it.
This next little run of games looks tough, but it’s not an impossible stretch of fixtures in reality. Yes, Bournemouth and Leeds away are two of the tougher games you could have on paper, but we’ve got to go into both of them with a positive mindset. Both sides are great at home, and we’re poor away, but that has to change at some point – so why can’t that be now?
I want to see the players that come in for our injured troops really grab the bull by the horns and take their opportunities. I don’t think that it’s been a secret that Isidor, Mayenda, and Geertruida have been frustrated by their lack of game-time, but now is their chance to shine and show the manager why he needs to stick by them once the others are back fit.
These are not mugs – these are really good footballers who have already shown us what they can offer. The best possible scenario that we can hope for is that these lads really grasp their chance, the results and performances improve, and Sunderland push on.
What we all want is a strong end to the season. We’re still within touching distance of those European places, and we’re still in the FA Cup. It’s time to put all the negativity of recent weeks to bed and get back to what got us this far in the first place – a fearless, unbreakable mentality, with a team that has given virtually every side in the country a tough ride since we returned to the Premier League.
Let’s draw a line under things, starting Saturday. Our season starts (again) now.
