In the aftermath of that mad Championship play-off semi-final win against Coventry, it felt like Sunderland had finally exorcised our Sky Blue demons. At the very least, I hoped it would be many years before we faced another nerve-shredding fixture against the West Midlanders.
Football moves quickly, however, and to paraphrase David Mitchell, it will never have a final victor. So, with weary hearts, we accepted that it was time for another jaunt up from Euston to the CBS Arena for a crucial match
against a club that hates us and nine times out of ten seems to get the better of us.
Frank Lampard’s Coventry City™ had actually had a similarly poor start to the season, but because they managed to nick a scrappy win at Forest and absolutely battered the Mags, they found themselves above us in the table. This is the frustrating thing about being in a relegation battle; teams can be utter dross three out of four weeks, but if they can spring a win in the fourth one and chip in with the odd draw here and there, they keep ticking over, something which seems beyond us at the moment.
I don’t think the additional fixtures from Europe and the League Cup are much of an excuse; the Brighton game was an awful display and that came after a three-week break. At least this time our recent midweek excursion had resulted in a promising win, so there was a bit more hope heading into this one than there might otherwise have been.
After a quick look around what’s left of Coventry Cathedral and a nice pint of ale at the Golden Cross, we headed over to our usual haunt of The Old Windmill to join the rest of our branch contingent. There were plenty of stories from Portugal and Poznań, as everyone seemed keen to talk about anything other than the upcoming game. Some Coventry fans quizzed us about our branch banner and why some of us didn’t have London accents, the concept of people relocating to different parts of the country seemingly an alien one to them.
After a stop-start Uber drive through the matchday traffic, we made our way towards the away end and heard the all-too-familiar refrain of “Jimmy’s in a box” on the air; probably my least favourite of all Sunderland chants, all things considered. It really is time for everyone to move on from that sorry episode. It does nothing for our reputation as a fanbase and only seems to fire up Coventry even more.
Once again, we were lining up in pink, looking to break our duck in the polarising away kit. The club’s social media campaign with Premier League Productions, imagining fixtures as cinematic releases, is quite a clever one in theory. Unfortunately, the performances we’ve produced in it to date have been more reminiscent of The Room, Sharknado or Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker than Citizen Kane or The Godfather. The opening credits had barely been on screen and we already looked shaky, a far cry from the confident and aggressive display shown by our “second-string” XI in midweek.
The first goal epitomised the issues that have plagued us all season, as Coventry were given all the time they needed to find the cross, and Sakamoto curled it finely into the corner. We created an instant opportunity for a response, but unfortunately Brobbey was unable to find the magic touch he’d displayed at the Etihad and dragged a shot wide.
The second goal was embarrassing in its ineptitude; time seemed to slow down, as if our players were waiting for a foul that was never going to arrive. There was a stunned silence in the away end as the home fans gleefully rubbed our noses in it once again; it seemed that normal service had resumed at the CBS Arena.
Any hopes of a second-half comeback were dashed almost immediately with another pathetic goal conceded, and some in the away end headed for another pint or an early exit. To be honest, I only stayed mostly out of morbid fascination to see just how bad things would get. As it turned out, we did show a marginal improvement, and a penalty for handball allowed us a glimmer of hope that we could get back into the game.
Unfortunately, this hope proved a forlorn one, as despite controlling most of the ball for the remaining periods, we couldn’t find a second goal to make the home side panic, and the Coventry fans regained their confidence to mock us again with their familiar taunts. Alderete’s pointless red card at the end just summed up the state of the team at the moment, and many in the away end didn’t hold back from letting the players know what they thought of the latest turgid display on offer.
With almost all trains back to London cancelled due to signal failures, there was plenty of time to glumly reflect on our predicament. If and when the brutal decision to remove Le Bris is made, it will be an undeniably sad conclusion to the tenure of a man who has been one of the best – if not the best – Sunderland managers in my lifetime. Sadly, though, the future prospects of the club have to come first, and from our current trajectory it seems impossible to see any other way that this downward spiral can be reversed beyond drastic changes.
