All I mean by this is I was looking forward to entering the premier league swinging and not feeling any pressure. Every game should be a "nothing to lose" game. It should free us up to properly go for it. Having a hypothetically "easy" start puts pressure on us to get points on the board, pressure I would rather without. We have to play every game twice anyway. The flipside of course is that it gives us the chance to get points on the board, and therefore confidence, early.
Don't look too far ahead mate. I am not fooled anymore and there are literally no easy games in the Premier league so, for example, losing to Brentford or West Ham will be of no surprise and as long as we made a game of it, I will not chuck my toys out of the pram.
A thousand times this. Build confidence. The Reid year we got tanked off Chelsea then had some lovely games that set us up. If we can have 12 points after 6 games we have a foundation.
me neither. I'm not worried about me. I'm expecting a long hard season where every win feels amazing. I'm more worried about the fanbase on social media, and frankly the match threads in here.
Yes absolutely. As long as people don't over-react if its 2 points from those 6 games. We're equally likely IMO to pick up points in the harder run of games.
Calling it now. We win our 1st 3 games. Let's be honest we couldn't have really hoped for a better 3 fixtures to get us started. Then again if we pick up 1 or 2 points form those 3 games it won't bode well. That said I think we will smash those 3
This I’ve seen some annoyed that the first away game isn’t ’a big club’ or ‘new ground’ I’m over the moon with our start personally.
Exactly I'd hate to come up and see us get smashed by Liverpool Arsenal and City 1st 3 games. Our start hopefully gives us a chance to get a head start on some of the teams that will be in and around us. Ultimately we need to win 10 games and pick up a few draws along the way to have a chance. If we can pick 3 of those up in August it's a canny dent in it.
To be clear, that's not the angle I'm coming from. My point is more the "easier" games are a great chance to gain confidence but also a great chance to massively lose confidence. Whereas the "harder" games don't risk losing as much confidence. A 0-2 loss at home to West Ham will have people worried whereas a 0-2 loss at home to Liverpool people would shrug and move on the next one. There will 100% be people in here decrying the season as over as "we can't even beat West Ham and Burnley" if we don't win either of our first 2 games. Now from an actual team and progress perspective - 100% you want easier games first. I'm more talking about the mood within the fanbase.
Well statistically we are not. We are more likely to pick up points from teams in the bottom half that ones in the top. We couldn't really ask for a better start to try and get a foothold in the league and get points on the board.
The pressure is on to start well. We need to be in the top half at the end of the first 10 games imo.
We will be there after 38 games mate. I honestly think we can suprise a few this season. I base this on absolutely nothing other than blind faith.
Yeh statistically no - I just mean people shouldn't go overboard if we lose the first few. But we know they will. Indeed people will use this easy start as an excuse to go overboard in their negativity.
The online chatter next season will probably be painful a lot of the time. Best to just accept that there'll be Very Online Sunderland Fans losing their **** with regularity for the next while
I’m not sure we will Its a good start on paper but I still don’t expect us to win more than 2 of our of first 6 We’re favourites to finish bottom and rightly so.
Ok thats good. This is the grounding I think the fanbase need to remain on. We are the underdogs here. It's a brilliant start for us but wins are still brilliant, not assumed as guaranteed because its easier than it might have been (I know nobody is doing that but I've seen people saying we're going to win our first 4 games... we might... but we probably wont.)
