SUNDERLAND centre-back Steve Caldwell believes this weekend's break from the pressures of Championship football can help the Black Cats put their stuttering season back on track.

The Wearsiders will forget the rigours of their fight for promotion to the Premier League temporarily until after Saturday's FA Cup game against Crystal Palace at the Stadium of Light.

With the festive season yielding just four points from 12, the Premiership side from south London will give Mick McCarthy's side the chance to bury the ghost of Christmas past.

"It's good that we're getting a slight break from the league when we're not having the best of runs," said Caldwell, who is expected to play his first FA Cup game on Saturday.

"If we'd won four games in a row then obviously we'd want a league game again because we'd be full of confidence and ready for any teams in the Championship.

"It's also possibly good to get a rest from the pressures of the league and go into a Cup game and enjoy the Cup atmosphere against a Premiership team and hopefully show what we are capable of.

"We can use the game as a springboard to get us back up and running."

The Wearsiders run over Christmas and New Year has seen them concede eight goals in four games, and culminated in the Stadium of Light crowd booing the players off at the final whistle following Monday's drab 1-1 draw at home to relegation-threatened Gillingham.

Caldwell, however, believes the fans will only help the players by getting behind them and supporting them through the bad times.

He said: "The fans pay their money and are entitled to their opinion.

"It's disappointing for me when they boo but when we play as badly as we did (against Gillingham) you could say they're entitled to.

"I'd rather they just supported us but that's just the nature of football.

"I 'm certainly not having a go at the fans.

"When we're winning and really about our games and in top form then the fans are right behind us.

"They're one of the best in the country and we need to get them back.

"Sometimes we need them also to be there for us when we're not having such a great time - to support us and help us through it.

"Hopefully they're going to do that for us if there are times like that again this season."

Caldwell hopes the end of the festive season will coincide with an end to the Black Cats poor run of form, and the Wearsiders can put together another impressive sequence of results.

Despite their miserly return over the past fortnight, McCarthy's men can take heart from the fact that, Ipswich apart, the other teams near the top of league have failed to take advantage of the dip in Sunderland's form.

"It's a long season and everybody has their sticky patches," said Caldwell. "Much better teams than us will have bad spells over a season. We're very very disappointed we're going to be working really really hard to get it right.

"We're hoping this has been a bad patch and we're going to go on another great run which we have done this season many times.

"We really have to do that now because we've let in slip in the last few games.

"We were pretty awful in the first half on Saturday at Preston. As a unit we were pretty disorganised.

"But our fightback showed what we're capable of, showed the spirit we have.

"We almost got the draw which possibly we didn't deserve.

"But we're not quite carrying the little bit of luck we were.

"Again we looked a bit jaded against Gillingham. We were a little bit slow, our passing was a little bit slow.

"It's not like us because we are passing teams to death in games this season. Possibly we can look at the positive. It might be the point that is crucial and the one that gets us promotion at the end of this season.

"We can take the positives into the next game and possibly get a victory against Derby and hopefully against Palace first in the Cup."

l Sunderland will discover later this week the extent of the knee ligament injuries suffered by Julio Arca and Gary Breen. The pair will miss Saturday's FA Cup clash against Crystal Palace, with Liam Lawrence rated doubtful with an Achilles problem.

* New Rotherham chairman Peter Ruchniewicz is predicting a brighter future at Millmoor after his consortium cleared the club's debts of £3m.

A new 4,000 capacity stand is planned for December but the new board - Millers 05 Ltd - have warned no money will be available to boss Ronnie Moore until they get the club breaking even next season. ''This is a new beginning for Rotherham United. We are moving forward on and off the field,'' Ruchniewicz said.

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