The pressure is now on – and Black Cats must start purring against Hull
Apr 14 2009 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal
AFTER the dismal display at home to Wigan Athletic, it is probably just as well Sunderland fans had to wait nearly a month for their next trip to the Stadium of Light. At the end of it, the mood could scarcely have been more different.
Following the 2-1 defeat by Wigan, few players were willing to speak in public. One of the few who did, captain Dean Whitehead, used it as a platform for expressing his dissatisfaction at the lack of support from the stands that day (he apologised in last week’s programme for his choice of words, but not the sentiment). Saturday’s scoreline was the same but there were plenty of smile-wreathed Black Cats willing to talk about it afterwards.
Their words were as positive as the football which preceded them had been, talking of how Sunderland had taken the game to Manchester United, how they had set the standards for the rest of the season. That should have set alarm bells ringing. The last time the mood was so good was when Kieran Richardson and others began talking about playing in the Europa League (that’s next season’s replacement for the Uefa Cup to you and I) after being cruelly denied victory by Tottenham Hotspur.
His hubris was quickly shown for what it was by a run of four defeats – and counting.
It is a sequence which must not continue if the Black Cats want to play Premier League football next season.
Hull City are a mess of a football team. One win in 16 matches is the classic form of the club which gets sucked from mid-table mediocrity at the turn of the year into a full-blown relegation battle by the time the clocks go forward.
Phil Brown (why is it that the only non-North East teams who look likely to go down are managed by people from this region?) appears to have lost the dressing room and his team has definitely lost its confidence. The early-season Tigers have become late-season pussycats, there for the taking for anyone who fancies an easy three points. Even Middlesbrough managed to put three goals past them, for goodness sake. So think what it would do if Hull were to somehow return from Wearside with three points at the weekend. It would be as powerful shot in the arm for the Yorkshiremen as the one they delivered to Boro at the weekend. Suddenly it would be the Hull Daily Mail writing pieces about the green shoots of recovery and The Journal preparing its obituaries for Sunderland’s top-flight future.
