After a bruising and morale-sapping weekend, Sunderland need to respond strongly

Yesterday at 02:00 AM

It's been a dismal few days for everyone connected with the club, but the international break needs to be used for recovery, reflection and to prepare for a reaction, writes Phil West

As miserable weekends go for those of us of a red and white persuasion, the period spanning March 15-16 2025 will certainly be remembered in years to come.

To say the least, it's been bad as anything we endured during the dying days of our most recent Premier League stint, the harrowing Championship campaign of 2017/2018 or the four-year trudge through League One that came afterwards.

If the lifeless defeat at the hands of Coventry City on Saturday was tough to deal with, the sight of a Saudi-backed plaything of a football club celebrating their League Cup success after a thoroughly deserved Wembley victory over a gutless Liverpool side was the kind of conclusion that would turn the stomach of even the most weathered Lads fan.

It was painful. It was annoying, and it was frankly hideous to see.

Nevertheless, we know that as fans of this magnificent and often brutal sport, you have to take the rough with the smooth at times, so let's start by addressing a fairly shambolic ninety minutes at the CBS Arena and a performance that did nothing to dispel the notion that the Lads are hitting a ceiling with the playoffs appearing on the horizon.

We know there's history between ourselves and Coventry and that the Sky Blues — reborn impressively under Frank Lampard — are beginning to motor, but that standard of performance in such a game simply wasn't acceptable and for the first time during his tenure, the questions seem to be mounting for Régis Le Bris.

Any Sunderland fan will testify that a successful promotion run is propelled by a large amount of belief and confidence that you can rise to the challenge.

We did that under Peter Reid; we did it under Mick McCarthy and we certainly did it under Roy Keane as the no-nonsense Irishman practically grabbed the club by its lapels, got every player invested into he was trying to do, and hauled Sunderland into the top flight for what eventually turned into a ten-year stay.

However, in recent weeks, I've been unable to shake a growing feeling that we're hoping it'll happen instead of being proactive and ensuring that we make it happen, and our collapse in the West Midlands did little to quell those fears.

It's at this stage of the season that chests need to be stuck out, attitudes need to harden and ruthlessness needs to kick in, but that's simply not been the case and as things turned sour against Lampard's side, the players' body language became increasingly negative and no one seemed to be trying to counteract it.

This followed the midweek draw with Preston, during which we only came alive and started to take the game to the visitors when Paul Heckingbottom's team began to masquerade as graduates from the Royal Shakespeare Company, with theatrics, rule bending and time wasting aplenty.

The full-throttle football that we saw earlier in the campaign was never going to be sustained for the entire season, but the switch to dull, timid and increasingly ineffectual patterns of play feels like more than a shift in style.

Instead, it feels like a loss of nerve and with Le Bris showing no signs of wavering from his current approach, it's hard to escape the feeling that there's an element of drift kicking in.

Nobody expects the composed Frenchman to start kicking water containers and yelling at officials but if we're to generate momentum down the home straight, there does need to be a greater sense of urgency than we've seen recently — from players and coaches alike.

Seven losses in the league all season is a respectable total but it's the points dropped, the opportunities missed and the games (particularly at home, post-Christmas) in which we've simply not performed that have been our undoing.

Our record against the high flyers is actually very good, but we've stumbled against the humdrum sides too often and that's not the mark of a promotion-winning side.

On Saturday, there was an alarming lack of urgency from the Lads and it was the first time in a while that you could legitimately question the players' attitude, work rate and desire — a very rare occurrence this season, given how wholeheartedly they've acquitted themselves and the results they've achieved along the way.

We all know that Premier League football is a daunting assignment for a newly-promoted club and that in all likelihood, a major injection of cash would be required in order to give us a fighting chance of survival.

However, does that mean we should shy away from it? No.

The chance is still there for us, albeit through the playoffs, and we must use the international break to regroup, recover from a bruising weekend and work bloody hard to find the solutions ahead of the visit of Millwall on the final weekend of March.

In a recent interview, David Bruce claimed that the mindset within the club has now changed to the point where we'd be ready to step up to the top flight with gusto.

That's an admirable sentiment but it needs to be backed up with actions, and if Newcastle ending their seventy-year domestic trophy drought doesn't light a fire under everyone at the Stadium of Light, spurring them on to bring Premier League football (and genuine competitiveness) back to Wearside, the prestige of being custodians of a sleeping giant of epic proportions and with tremendous potential certainly should.

That's the very least the supporters deserve.