Page 42 - 370167 LP253351 A Love Supreme Magazine - A5 48pp (Issue 260) v2

WHAT WE NEED IN JANUARY
January is always a weird time. And I’m not just talking football. The exhaustion and lack of money after the holidays always brings down the mood but this year there could well be a hangover for football
fans from the World Cup to deal with. Will players returning from Qatar be able to motivate themselves immediately after their glories or miseries or will it be a season that drags to a dull end in May? Time will tell, but for Sunderland, I hope the answer is yes, dull is good this season.
Sunderland is a club moving in the right direction. It’s far from perfect on or off the pitch but the direction of travel is clear and strengthening in January is essential if we are to get where we want to be by the end of the season.
The first question therefore is where do we want to be in May? Rather pessimistically, I started the season far more concerned about relegation than promotion and yet we enter December in midtable with a decent collection of wins and, amazingly, yet to be really turned over by anyone. I’d have taken that regardless but, add in the loss of both of our strikers and arguably most talented defender and it’s been a better start to the season than I could have hoped for. I worry that our successes have added pressure to the players with an expectation from the fans that we might push on.
I still think the playoffs are (and should be) just beyond reach and, while we look decent so far, we have to have one eye on the competitive bottom third of the division. The division is so tight it could turn quickly.
Last January we played Bolton away in League One and lost 6-0. It was a spell of football that made many fans think we’d never get out of League One and a lot of the
blame was laid at the feet of the players who, according
to some journalists weren’t good enough to play at that level, never mind a higher level. That team featured Cirkin, Batth, Evans, Neil, Dajaku, Embleton, Gooch and Stewart. Patterson and Pritchard also played in the defeat to Lincoln when we were taught a football lesson by Chris Maguire.
The fact that, in twelve months, fans opinions on these players have moved from that to the idea they could push to get in the Premier League is mind blowing. One of the greatest risks to the club is that we try to do things too quickly. This season, and this January, needs to be about reinforcing our position in the Championship.
And, in case Alex Neil is reading this and is still confused, perhaps it’s worth remembering how our recruitment strategy works. We buy and develop young players with something to prove and, if they’re successful in proving themselves, they increase in value and we cash in to invest in the future. No club wants to be a selling club, but even the massive clubs sell players on at the right time and we have to accept it’s the way we’re doing things at this stage in our revival.
I suspect Ross Stewart’s injury has come at a good time for
42 ALOVESUPREME ISSUE260