Ricky Sbragia wants the Cats purring on pitch

May 9 2009 by Paul Cunningham, The Journal

One of Sunderland’s biggest away followings will roar them on at the Reebok Stadium but Ricky Sbragia wants to know if his players have what it takes to rise to the occasion. Stuart Rayner reports

THIS morning not hundreds but thousands of Wearsiders will clamber into cars, buses and trains for the journey to Bolton in the hope of seeing a victory and a performance from a team which has produced precious few of either beyond the Stadium of Light in recent months.

Like the wife who keeps going back to her cheating husband in the hope that this time it might be different, nearly 5,000 Sunderland fans will be in the away end at the Reebok Stadium this afternoon, clinging dutifully to their love supreme.

If it was entertainment they were after, they should save themselves the bother. Apparently they can get it just down the road on a daily basis, where the Black Cats are dynamite in training. But it is blind devotion, rather than a search for on-field entertainment which will drive those supporters up and down the motorways and train tracks today.

The question of how Sunderland can be so good behind closed doors but so poor when people are watching has vexed manager Ricky Sbragia for weeks.

He, and everyone employed by the club, will always furiously deny it is because his players do not fully comprehend the enormity of relegation, but until another answer can be found, the suspicion will linger in the minds of those travelling supporters. So it is perhaps no bad thing the players have had a week which has brought them into direct contact with people whose passion for the club is undoubted, from the ordinary to the heavyweight (or rather light-heavyweight).

On Tuesday night, many of them mingled with the club’s supporters as the latter were handed the unenviable task of selecting a player of the year. They snubbed the stars bought in the summer to take Sunderland to “the next level” and opted for Danny Collins, a grafter from the Mick McCarthy days.

This week the players shared their cornflakes at the Academy of Light with professional boxer Tony Jeffries, another who, like Collins, has reached unexpected heights without his feet leaving the ground.

The Black Cats fan was not drafted in for any motivational speech – it is not his style – or so he could be locked in an empty room with them for five minutes. But it is to be hoped that someone somewhere has got the message through.

“We just thought we’d bring him in,” Sbragia says of Jeffries. “Why not? He’s a bit of an idol and he’s won more than we have. He came in for breakfast, had a chat with the staff, I asked him to come in and said stay for the day. He just walked around, he didn’t join in training – although he might be good as a goalkeeper, punching everything away! It was just to say thanks very much, he’s done a super job for Sunderland.”

That is more than can be said of the Black Cats since drawing at Arsenal in February put them into the top half of the Premier League.

“I don’t know if they’ve taken foot off the gas since, but I wouldn’t have thought so,” Sbragia says. “We haven’t played well enough as a unit, that’s the biggest problem.

“In training they’ve been really good, it’s just transferring what they do in training into game situations. We’ve felt on umpteen times we could have kicked on, but haven’t.

“I am concerned, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve never stopped a training session and said, ‘That’s not acceptable, I’m not having that.’

“Niall (Quinn, the chairman) came down last week and said there’s no way you’d think we’re in the situation we’re in.

“Whether they’ve got the belief is another thing, they tell me they have, but it’s not quite showing. Getting off to a good start at Bolton would help, it would change everything within the minds of the players. “I know they can do better, that’s the disappointing thing.” His is by no means a minority view.

“If you watch training every day it’s top class, but on a Saturday it has been a different story,” Collins admits.

While Collins concedes it is the players’ fault, the manager ultimately carries the can, and Sbragia’s frustration is never far from the surface. “I think the players know the situation and what’s required,” he says when asked. “Got to get on with it, stop promising we’ll deliver something and not quite delivering it.

“It’s time we stood up to be counted. In our last five or six games we’ve outdone the opposition in terms of distances covered, but not in results.

“When we send them on the pitch, we think we prepare them. Whether they have they got the balls to play is another thing. It is confidence.”