It’s been one week since Sunderland beat Newcastle, and what a week it has been.
I’m not really sure when the buzz will end, but I still haven’t gotten bored with watching all the content surrounding the game. The highlights, the goals, the fan footage, the crying mags… It’s all still absolutely brilliant.
I suppose that’s a really good thing, given we’ve not got a lot else to talk about until we build up to the game with Spurs. It’s always brilliant when you beat your nearest and dearest, but we never
get this length of time to stew on it – usually, there’ll be another game to talk about within a few days, and our focus switches.
But not this time – we can gloat, we can rub it in, and we can pore over every single ounce of video, audio, and mag tears for just that little while longer.
I was thinking about this before, and I had a little chuckle to myself, but can you imagine losing that game, then having to wait three weeks to put it right, all the while the fans of your biggest rivals are rubbing it in at every opportunity? I’d feel absolutely sick. In no way do I have ANY sympathy for Newcastle supporters here, because they certainly earned their medicine having told us that this game would be six easy points for the team from Tyneside, but they must be demented by it. I’m not sure I’d cope.
That length of time that both clubs have had to wait for the next game will be crucial, I imagine, to where our respective seasons go from here, and despite the fact we won’t play each other again between now and May (which, let’s be honest, is a crying shame as we could really do with the extra points) the fortunes of Sunderland and Newcastle are unavoidably linked. We’re both basically in the same position in the table, and both have ambitions to finish in the top eight. This, like the Brighton loss we suffered a few weeks ago, was a six-pointer and a game that neither team could really afford to lose, as it meant giving up ground to a side nearby in the table.
Hopefully the knock of confidence that Newcastle will have undoubtedly suffered as a result of losing against Sunderland will lead to their league form spiralling, as that can only be a good thing for us, whilst I’d like to think that winning such a massive game will galvanise our squad and send us on our way to winning even more games.
Our home form has been poor recently, after going on the greatest run of unbeaten results by any team in the Premier League this season, and that needs to be addressed now, starting with Spurs.
We need to get the Stadium of Light back to being the fortress that it was earlier in the campaign, as that will be key to where we go from here. That means the fans must do their part, back the team ‘til the end, and for those who decided to leave games early and turn their backs, they must pull up their big boy pants and remember how crucial their support is to getting the team over the line in games.
Our last three league away results have been brilliant, and I think it’s fair to say that we’ve addressed our form on the road. We were the better side at Bournemouth and were robbed by poor officiating, and then followed that up by going away to Leeds and Newcastle and collecting six points, which I doubt many other sides will have done this season. Villa, Wolves and Everton are our only remaining away games and they’re all fighting for something, so it won’t be easy going to any of those places, but we took points off all of them in the reverse fixtures and that shows we’re more than good enough to give them a game.
The good feeling that’s coursing through my veins and your veins right now on the back of the Newcastle win needs to be harnessed. This is the type of result that should really breathe new life into our season, and with a raft of important players returning to the squad after the international break, it feels absolutely crucial that we don’t waste the opportunity to kick on.
There’s a top-ten finish and potential European football firmly within our grasp, and together with these players we cannot waste the opportunity to make even more history this season. We know we’re good enough, but it’s about having belief and growing our momentum to get us over the finish line.
It’s time to knuckle down and do something special.
