Are Sunderland AFC the unluckiest club in the premiership or is there more to it than that?
After yet another managerial hokey-cokey in the summer (I won’t even go there about Allardyce’s three months of mayhem), we certainly didn’t start the season running. At the time it wasn’t fair to hold Moyes accountable – he’d done what he could with the time and resources given. But six league games in and the R-word is already being bandied about all too frequently.
Meanwhile our injury list continues to get ever longer, with more key players unavailable for the weekends match against West Brom. (Is it too early to call it a six-pointer?)
Mannone, Cattermole, Januzaj, Borini, Pienaar, Anichebe, Larsson. All players you’d expect to make the bench if not the starting XI. Pienaar has looked good the few times he’s featured, but he’s no good to us if he’s made of glass. You could be forgiven for forgetting about Borini, who was not so long ago part of a will-he-won’t-he saga more dramatic than a Coronation Street cliffhanger.
Pickford’s been outstanding but it’s not the point. A competition for whose going to be between the sticks is the type of headache you’re happy to have. As for Januzaj – he worked his backside off last week and will certainly be a miss today.
Just what is it that’s causing all these injuries so early in the season? There’s more casualties in the SAFC camp than there would be after a week-long stag do in Magaluf. Is it bad luck or is there more to it than that? Someone up there has obviously decided that all Sunderland fans must be subject to a lifetime of misery and suffering (with the occasional ray of hope thrown our way) – is this all part of that?
Or does the problem lie within the club, which lets face it must be giving the media team endless sleepless nights. With one thing and another, SAFC’s publicity hasn’t been ideal over the past year. Is it the overall ethos within the club? Is it the training regime? Is Moyes asking them to joust on horseback, or getting them all to line up and go in for fifty-fifties with Cattermole and Koné to toughen them up?
Whatever it is, it’s not boding well for our next run of games. Today’s match against West Brom is crucial – but how many games have we said that about in the past? It’s barely October and here we are again, telling ourselves we could quite fancy Rotherham away and Sky’s ruined the Premier League anyway.
Something has to change, and fast. Let’s just hope that magic sponge doesn’t have to be wrung out again today at the SOL. Someone needs to wrap Jermaine Defoe in bubble wrap because if he’s next on the list . . .
