Match Day Thread Sunderland v Burton Albion - Saturday 21st April KO 15:00

Sunderland host Burton Albion in the Sky Bet Championship

Last time out Sunderland drew with Reading and Burton beat Derby.
The Black Cats missed yet another opportunity to grab 3 points after taking the lead at Reading, but again failed to hang on for a vital win. Sunderland have been dealt a cruel blow with the news that Williams, Gooch, Love and Asoro will all miss the final games of the season due to injury.
Burton Albion moved ahead of Sunderland at the bottom of the Championship with a home win against Derby County. The Brewers will be without top-scorer Lloyd Dyer, and potentially other key players. Tom Naylor, Damien McCrory, Marvin Sordell and Tom Flanagan are also doubts for the game, although Darren Bent is expected to return against his former club.

Chris Coleman:
“The message to the squad has to be the same. We can’t think about what may be.
It is not about whoever loses could finish bottom, it is not about any of that, it is about us still being in with an outside chance. Even if we weren’t, we are professional people.”
“We have a job to do. We can’t show what we have been showing and then go into this game and show something different. We can’t do that, we have a job to do and to get a result and to make sure we get another performance.”
“Gooch and Asoro are both out for the season, Goochy got a kick on the bottom of his quad and knee, and that will keep him out for the season, and Jonny Williams probably isn’t going to make it back before the end of the campaign.”
“Donald Love is also out for the season. In the last minute at Reading he got a booking after coming across the guy, and he’s hurt the ligaments in his knee. Joel’s is a hamstring which happened yesterday right at the end of training, and realistically that’s going to be a two to three-week injury.”
“We lost Bryan Oviedo today after he limped off, that’s all very disappointing, but John O’Shea trained today and came through it no problem. That’s good news, and Billy Jones and Adam Matthews also trained today and came through it.”

Nigel Clough:
"We felt as if we've deserved a home victory in the last few weeks. We got a few breaks today, our hard work saw us through in the end. Today we battled away. We got a couple of half chances and we put them away."

Form:

Match facts:

• Sunderland and Burton's only previous meeting was in November, with the Black Cats winning 2-0 at the Pirelli Stadium.
• Nigel Clough has only faced Chris Coleman away from home once previously as managers - a 1-0 win for Derby at Coventry City's Ricoh Arena in April 2010.
• If Sunderland suffer relegation this weekend, they will become the first team to spend 10 consecutive seasons in the top-flight and then embark upon consecutive relegations to the third tier.
• Sunderland have kept the fewest clean sheets in the Championship this season (5). In fact, no side in England's top four tiers has kept fewer shutouts in league competition (level with Barnet, Bournemouth, Stoke and Northampton).
• Burton have lost just two of their nine previous Championship matches against teams starting the day in the bottom three (W4 D3), although one of those defeats was against Sunderland in November.
• Lucas Akins has been directly involved in a higher share of Burton's league goals this season than any other player (30%).

Sports Analytics Machine: Home win (50%)
Prutton predicts: 0-1

Match Appointments:
Referee: DARREN ENGLAND
Assistants: Nick Greenhalgh and Matt Foley
Fourth Official: Robert Jones

Team Line ups
Sunderland: Camp, Matthews, Kone, O’Shea, Jones, Cattermole, McNair, Honeyman, McGeady, McManaman, Fletcher.
Substitutes: Stryjek, Wilson, Clark-Salter, Ejaria, Robson, Molyneux, Maja.
Injured: Watmore, Browning, Ruiter, Williams, Gooch, Love, Asoro (All out for the season), Oviedo
Lost: Rodwell
Locked up: Gibson

Burton Albion: Bywater, Brayford, McFadzean, Buxton, Turner, Davenport, Akins, Murphy, Akpan, Bent, Boyce
Substitutes: Allen, Samuelsen, Campbell, Barker, Hutchinson, Egert
Injured: Dyer, Naylor, McCrory, Sordell, Flanagan
Betting Odds:
H 10/11 A 3/1 D 5/2

My two pence:
Three games left, bottom of the league and still 6 points adrift of Birmingham and Bolton, we have no more room to manoeuvre so it’s now or never time. If we had won instead of drawing the last three it would be so so different, but we just don’t do easy, do we. Three wins could see us pull off the greatest of great escapes, but who could imagine the bottom team beating the second placed team (Oh yeah - Man Utd 0 West Brom 1) Bring it on
Fail to win this game and we could be relegated on Saturday.
I reckon a 2-1 win.

Ha’way the Lads

 

Think it will be an easier game than you've had for a while and after a nervy first half it'll end 2-0 or 3-0. Sadly the worst two terms in the league to then face would be Fulham and Wolves so ultimately this is about pride and trying to cling on to hope and making other teams nervous. A 3 point gap at the end of Saturday would have a few above bricking it.

 

What I'd like to see

----------------------Steele-------------------
Matthews---Kone---Wilson---Oviedo
-------------McNair---Honeyman--------
Molyneux----McGeady--Mcmanaman
----------------------Maja--------------------------

The M Force!!!

What I think we'll get

-----------------------Camp------------------
Jones-----Kone---Oshea-----Oviedo
--McNair--Cattermole--Honeyman
-Mcmanaman-Fletcher--McGeady

Prediction.

We go 1 nil up only for Darren Bent to score a late equaliser relegating both teams (if that's possible)

 

Clash of the Titans!!!

 

A Burton win to cut us adrift at the bottom of the league will round the season off nicely. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

I've just read the post about our goal keepers, so I'm expecting whoever wears the shirt to chuck a couple more in for good measure

 

S4it or bust........

 

And then beat Fulham and Wolves would be typical

 

Welcome home Nigel a Sunderland lad after all, the word Clough is enough for me to well up, his dad was greatest ever talisman to pull on a Sunderland shirt, and the worst decision in football history was made in 1972 by a board that makes this one look heaven sent, my opinion of course .

 

What happened in 1972 like?

 

You missed the bit about Darren Bent scoring the winner

Probably when SAFC failed to appoint Brian Clough

 

Of course we will win, when it's probably too late!!

3-0.

Bart

 

The board appointed Stokoe when Clough was available and ready to take on the job.

 

The same Stokoe who has a statue outside the stadium and won the last piece of silverware to grace the north east?

Clough may have done a great job we'll never know but given the level of appointments since it's hardly a disaster.

 

Stokoe gave us the best time ever, and he will never be forgotten by those lucky enough to have lived through it. The City, Arsenal and Leeds games which I attended were right up there with the best, hence the statue. Well deserved too, but it was short lived, and sadly the bubble burst the following year. Just comparing the records of the two men makes you wonder what would have happened here if Clough had taken over. You are right that it might not have worked out, and we will never know, but the time was right and a golden opportunity lost imo.

 

I've read this book called 1973 and All That by Lance Hardy (I think)

In it he spoke about how the club interviewed Clough at that time, but Clough was playing with us and stringing us along. He was annoyed (and rightly so) about not being given the job before he got the Hartlepool job

 

Those 3 games were truly unreal. Noise atmosphere excitement team and individual performances, success against the odds . I’m sure that if my mind ever goes, they will be my last memories. Yes , other clubs have achieved memorable giant killing acts, but I doubt that any can claim to doing such a trio as they did.

 

That's right, all three were current favourites to win the cup when they played us if I remember right, and my lasting memory is the way the whole town seemed to go berserk, that will never happen again I am sure.

Not read that book, but Doug Weatherall, the leading NE journalist was very close to Clough at the time and he always maintained that Clough was desperate to take on the job. I don't believe the stringing along line for one minute, I think he who ever he is, has Clough confused with Don Revie or Bobby Robson maybe, as I know for certain both played that game with us.

 

Isn't Clough supposed to have said he'd have crawled up the A1 on his hands and knees to be our manager?

 

Yes, that’s what I’ be always understood he’d said

 

I honestly think we will win our last 3 games but even that will probably not be enough.

Lets just get beat today, confirm relegation, new owners are announced and then get rid of all the crap over there once and for all.

PS, if Coleman doesnt put Rodwell on the bench today and makes the c*nt warm up constantly on the touchline then that c*nt can f*ck off as well as far as I am concerned.