Put this out a couple of weeks ago with mixed responses, but after now seeing the massive changes he's already made to the teams style of play and the boost in confidence, I'm more convinced we will get out of this mess we're in. Don't get me wrong, there's a long way to go and we could easily end up firmly rooted in the bottom three. But what a transformation eh? **** me, I even found myself praising Larsson and O'Shea on Sunday. Brown and Bardsley were immense and TBF, they all were, only one I could criticise would be Fletcher, he was way below par and looked unfit to me. That first half performance against City was brilliant and if this is the way we are going to play then the future certainly does look bright. Keep up the good work Gus.
Top post fella. We were never cut that far adrift from the pack, don't know why folk were so worried. We will play badly again, no doubt, and we will lose more games. There's still plenty of room for error though. People have been panicking like **** but two league wins has changed everything. Just two. Can't have been that bad if we're back in the survival mix after two wins. Still 81 points to play for anrl. The way some people have gone on you'd think we had 3 games left. We've had understandable disruptions with manager changes, new players needing time to settle and old ones needing to regain confidence. Our home games have looked impossible on paper. We were unlucky against Fulham then look who we've faced. Our poor start shouldn't have been a shock to anyone but look at our home games from now till the end of the season. Home games are the bread and butter of survival. Our support is vital to that, In the grounds, on the forums, at work and in the pub. Can we all get a grip now please and maintain a bit of optimism when we hit a run of bad results? We've got the crowd back as the 12th man and it's helping the players no end. It doesn't help them if we all start shrieking about in panic when we lose a couple. Keep The Faith Mutha ****ers
I'm still convinced it was a horde of alien clones ...Sunderland just don't play like that! Bring back McCartney, let's get back to good ol' hit-and-hope hoofball
If we can keep up that performance, especially the 2nd half defensive display (our goalkeeper was'nt man of the match, that tells you something!) we will win morer than we lose, the next couple of away games against Stoke & Villa will be interesting!
They'll be looking at the fact that we stopped the team who put away 12 goals in 2 games from scoring & weren't frightened to play football with them!
I'm not sure what to expect from the Stoke game - whilst Hughes is trying to instill a "football philosophy" it's still the same dirty twats that were there last season (Shawcross, Huth and Charlie ****ing Adam). To this end I'm worried for Brown - as he's brittle, Adam is always prone to going over the top of the ball and he certainly targets players (as he did with Gardner at the SOL last season) If we can keep calm heads and not rise to it then we have a very good chance. Play football and they will struggle - even City's players seemed to know which was Fletcher's injured shoulder (3 times I watched Lescott target it - same shoulder every time - IMO just as bad as Larsson's challenge as it's more pre meditated and calculated) so you can guarantee Huth and Shawcross will know which one he injured
Good post Welder. Cant comment on the Fletcher bit, I only got to listen to the match on the car radio for 80 minutes but it sounded like we had 11 black cats playing like lions. I got to see the last 10 minutes or so and probably made a twat of meself in my local, screaming at Altidore to work his a**e off more. That may be unfair I guess but I think he hadn't been on long and was just jogging around half chasing the ball when it was hoofed forward by desparate defending. Apologies upfront to him if thats unfair - might just have been the stress of getting to see the last bit of the game. Also, the noise coming from the fans was MAD!! Had to keep turning it down in parts it was so loud in the car. One I really feel like I've missed out on! If we can get 40,000+ making that noise every week the SoL is going to be a points-rich fortress for us!
Stoke will also be looking at 3 points, so it could be a mad second half; as someone said, it's a six-pointer. I bet we practice defending a lot of set pieces
we really need to start turning over the teams around us. a win against stoke could lift us out of the relagation zone. considering the turmoil and upheavel weve had, as well as the nightmare start this would be a massive acheivement. we have the busy christmas period just round the corner so if we can pick up a few points and keep building the confidence we can start to pull away from the bottom of the table. these type of games historiclly have been a problem for us, we really need to start stringing wins together and this will give us an excellent chance if we can replacate the effort we saw against city
No mate, that isn't unfair, I was screaming at him myself cos he had fresh legs and should of ran himself into the ground for the cause, he only played about 15 minutes I think? TBF you only saw the defensive side to our game, the first half was a joy to watch and as has been said, I had to question if I was in the right stadium watching the same old Sunderland that were ****ing dire previously. If we can play to that level week in, week out, we'll have no problems at all.
After seeing us play against City and performing so well, I'm convinced there are worse teams than us. Fulham, West Ham, Palace, Hull, we'll be fine mate, no need to hit any panic buttons just yet.
With two wins we've gone from 7 points adrift to 7 points off Hull in 12th. Problem was there was a lot of doom mongers giving out the stats and records about bad starts to the league and that sent a lot into panic. Stats never tell the whole story, like our home games so far for example. Have you seen our remaining home games btw? Very pleasant reading now we're through most of top teams. My confidence always relied on a Coach getting them playing well, I admit that, but I've always been of the opinion the there are 5 or 6 teams who don't have our quality.
Great to see your resurgence gents for so many reasons Poyet is a top man and Taricco an Ipswich legend, great to see Colback in good form. Just goes to show Di Canio up for berating his players who can pull off a performance like the one on Sunday. Premier League survival and the League Cup trophy will do very nicely thank you very much and it leaves one more relegation slot for Norwich to drop into, wins all round.
Fully agree mate, I've always been a 'glass half full' man myself. It's going to be a hard slog for sure but a few wins like we've just had will boost our confidence no end and i'm convinced that Fulham, Palace, West Ham and even Hull will be in the mix in the next few weeks and we'll be climbing out of the bottom 3. Wonder what the so called pundits will be saying then? what stats will they produce to knock us then?
Slog and a half mate, we haven't helped ourselves. We've given the league a head start after all. Home form is the Key for me like, we've got home momentum now, if we can nick something off Spurs I can see us going unbeaten at home for the rest of the season. few draws and a couple of wins on the road would be a bonus that could lead to an unlikely comfortable finnish. But that would entirely rely on home from which has to maintain till the end of the season.
