Following a fantastic home win on the opening weekend, an altogether different challenge awaited the Lads as we headed down to Turf Moor. As one of our three promotion rivals from last season, most of our fans are pretty familiar with the Clarets, whose almost impenetrable defence made them a demoralising opponent to compete with – basically when you got the SofaScore update that they’d scored, you knew that they wouldn’t be dropping any points.
This season could be a different story, however, with
their defensive lynchpin CJ Egan-Riley choosing to swap the Lancashire mill town for the South of France (arguably an understandable lifestyle choice) and their incredibly smug but outstanding keeper James Trafford returning to Manchester City. Most pundits and commentators seemed hesitant to read much into either team’s 3-0 results from the opening day given their respective fixtures, so this clash would offer an interesting insight into where each side stood.
After fortuitously securing a ticket a few days before the game, it was an early train up from Kings Cross for this one to unite with some of the northern-based Lads fans in Leeds, before crossing the Pennines for the game. We swapped some away day stories with some good-natured Clarets fans on the train in, before checking into The Dubliner, our usual cheap-and-cheerful pitstop of choice for a trip to this part of Lancashire.
The away end was in excellent voice as Sunderland made a strong start. We didn’t realise it at the time from the other end of the ground, but Mayenda’s early missed chance was what people of mine and previous generations would call a “sitter”, and the perennially-online YouTube FPL generation would call something like a “1.75 Alpha-class Ultimate XG opportunity”. The first half was fairly even all-in-all, and we debated at half-time if another goalless draw would be a good result or if we needed to capitalise on this chance to take another huge three points.
The goalless draw started to look a lot more appealing shortly after the break, when a poor lapse in concentration allowed Cullen in to score. The effort was on show for the rest of the half, and despite some promising glimpses from Guiu off the bench and some good ball-carrying from Roberts, we never looked like finding a way past ex-Mag Dubravka. Burnley’s second which wrapped up a deserved-win for them was a fine finish, and we were hit with our first meaningful setback in quite some time.
Despite the usual goading from the adjacent Burnley fans, some of whom seem to harbour a bitter resentment of anyone not born within five minutes of Turf Moor, the mood among the travelling support was mostly calm and measured. Thankfully, this was mostly reflected in the online discourse after, aside from one misguided demand for the fans to be given an apology, and one call for Le Bris to be sacked, which turned out to be from a fake account ran by a Coventry fan with nothing better to do despite their side winning 7-1 and finally owning a ground that day. All pretty par for the course, then.
People weren’t kidding when they said we need to be prepared to face some disappointing days ahead this season. As we are constantly reminded, the Premier League is brutally unforgiving, and for sides like ours any sub-par performance will more than likely be punished with a defeat, even against the so-called “lesser lights”.
The last few months have been like an almost surreal nirvana for Sunderland fans, with very little of note to complain about, and some genuinely life-affirming moments. This was never going to last forever, which is why we all enjoyed it as much as we did.
Burnley might be quite a depressing place to lose, but it wasn’t that long ago we were labouring to a draw about eight miles against ten-man Accrington. While that obviously shouldn’t be the yardstick forever, for this season back in the big time it’s important to stay humble and remember how far we’ve come. As a fanbase it’s now time to live up to our collective promise to back this team unconditionally, and that shouldn’t change either, even if we fall short against Brentford at the SOL next week.
