LAST season, a finishing total of 75 points would have got you into the League One play-offs. Two years earlier, which was the previous time the regular season had been played to a completion, 74 points would have secured a place in the top six. The year before that? 72 would have done it. The previous season? 74.
With two games of the current League One campaign to play, Sunderland currently sit on the 80-point mark. In almost any other year, their play-off place would be secure and they would be heading into the final week of the season targeting automatic promotion.
Instead, as they prepare for tomorrow’s home game with Rotherham and Saturday’s season-ending trip to Morecambe, the Black Cats find themselves still needing four more points to guarantee finishing in the top six. Automatic promotion, while not entirely impossible, is extremely unlikely, and staggeringly, Alex Neil’s side could finish on 83 points and still find themselves missing out on the play-offs. Whatever happens in the next six days, it has been a truly remarkable season in the third tier.
“I’ll be honest with you, this league table is doing my head in,” admitted Neil, in the wake of Saturday’s resounding victory over Cambridge United. “We keep winning, but we’re not moving much, are we?
“We’ve won seven games out of the last ten, and we’ve still got work to do. It’s not easy, is it? We just need to keep going. Sometimes, you feel as if you’ve done really well, and have done a good job with the lads, and at the moment, I feel like the lads deserve a bit of, ‘Right, that’s us in the play-offs, let’s prep’. But that’s not the case.
“We need to go again. We need to try to win the game on Tuesday, and then we probably need to go and win the game on Saturday as well. But that’s the nature of this league, and credit to the other teams because they’ve made it really tough.
“We’re on 80 points, and I don’t think it’s been the case of needing that many points for the play-offs for I don’t know how long. It’s been a challenging season, but once again, I think we’ve shown we’re more than capable.”
Saturday’s victory has set up a grandstand finish to the season, but in truth, it was not really a reflection of the challenges that lie in wait in the next two games.
Tomorrow, Sunderland host a Rotherham side who desperately need to take at least a point to remain ahead of MK Dons in the battle for an automatic-promotion place. On Saturday, they travel to the Mazuma Stadium to face a Morecambe side who will head into the final afternoon of the season just two points clear of the relegation zone.
Saturday’s game against a mid-table Cambridge side with nothing to play for was like a palate-cleansing aperitif ahead of the main course, especially given that any lingering fight effectively went out of the visiting side when Lloyd James was harshly dismissed in the 12th minute for a foul on Ross Stewart. James unquestionably fouled the Sunderland striker, who had muscled his way ahead of him in the area, but the decision to also issue a straight red card as well as a penalty felt excessive.
Sunderland were rampant from that point onwards, with Stewart opening the scoring from the spot before also adding another goal with a clinical finish after swivelling in the area. Elliot Embleton, Nathan Broadhead and Danny Batth also got their names onto the scoresheet, and while the Black Cats’ numerical advantage was clearly a key factor in their victory, there was still much to admire in their clinical professionalism and the quality of their attacking play.
“It’s good for the lads’ confidence, and good for the fans as well in terms of that feel-good factor,” said Neil. “I’d like to think they’ve felt as if they’ve watched some really good football, seen some really good goals and been entertained. That bodes well for us going forward.”
Stewart will certainly have emerged from Saturday’s victory with a spring in his step, with his brace having ended an eight-game barren run that, while not a major source of concern, was becoming an unwanted annoyance at such a pivotal stage of the season.
The game also felt like something of a landmark moment for Lynden Gooch, with the wing-back producing one of his best performances in a Sunderland shirt as he repeatedly burst beyond a repositioned James Brophy to deliver a series of telling crosses into the box.
Gooch can often divide opinion amongst the Sunderland fanbase, but this was him at his incisive best, with his desire to get the ball into the middle quickly ensuring there was a clarity of purpose to his side’s attacking that has not always been apparent this season.
“I was really pleased with Lynden,” said Neil, after the academy product claimed the assist for Stewart’s second goal and Broadhead’s header. “I think that’s probably the best he’s played since I’ve been here.
“I thought the instruction for him was really clear – get on the outside and put good early deliveries in. But his quality was top notch.
“I’m really pleased for him, but the one thing I will say about him is he works his socks off every single day. When you talk about people wearing their heart on their sleeve for this club, he’s right up there. I don’t think anybody internally would ever have any doubts about Goochy. He’s a warrior and he’s desperate to do well here.”
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