Collins will savour survival fight
May 23 2009 by Steve Brown, The Journal
“When you have a defeat like we had (at Fratton Park) the lads can be a bit flat but once you put it behind you on the training pitch, and work hard out there, you’ve just got to look forward to the next game. That’s how football is these days, you can’t dwell on a result too long.
“It’s in our own hands, that’s been the case for a few weeks now. We’ve been thinking ‘Get three points and we’re safe’.
“We’ve struggled a bit, picked up a point at Bolton last week but the three haven’t come. But it’s still in our hands, we’re top of that group of teams (in threat of relegation) and we know if we can get a result at the weekend we’re safe. It’s a big game, whoever we’d have been playing.
“The crowd look forward to games when the top teams come to the Stadium of Light. We haven’t done too badly at home against the top teams this year.
“We drew with Arsenal and lost to Liverpool and Manchester United by the odd goal, and played pretty well in all those games.
“We’ll take those positives forward and if we’re not up for the game there’s something wrong with us. We know if we get out there, the crowd get behind us and we start with a good tempo, we’ll be OK.
“Hopefully we’ll get a result and let the other teams take care of themselves. If we don’t it’ll obviously be a bit tense out there, there’ll be a few signs coming in from the crowd about how other results are going elsewhere. Hopefully we haven’t got to rely on that.”
And hopefully then, Collins added, Sunderland can push on, in the way they hoped to this season.
“It’s a different experience this time,” he said.
“Last time we were down with about six games to go, with 15 points. This year we perhaps didn’t think we’d be in this position coming into the last weekend of the season, as Newcastle probably didn’t.
“If we can stay up this year, we’ll be looking to build on it, go again next year, perhaps get one or two (new players) in and look for a mid-table position.”
Just like lucky Wigan, and West Ham.
