Sunderland are building on solid defensive foundations!
Yesterday at 01:00 AM
Clean sheets earn you points in football, and Sunderland are making a habit of keeping sides out — another huge improvement on last season!
A 0-0 draw away from home is a positive result, no matter the circumstances.
Sunderland came away from QPR with this result on Saturday, marking our eighth clean sheet in just thirteen games.
Though our hosts were second from bottom, they've drawn a fair few games, and going down to ten men was a test for a defence that's been nothing short of resolute. It was another test passed with flying colours.
Our back four — Trai Hume, Chris Mepham, Luke O'Nien, and Dennis Cirkin — has been Sunderland's go-to for over half of the campaign so far. Each player complements the other, forming a settled defence that's answered nearly every question asked of it.
Dan Ballard was one of our best players last season, and Aji Alese started the 2024/2025 campaign as a fine partner for O'Nien.
Both players are approaching full fitness, but they'll have a real fight on their hands to get minutes. That's a huge compliment to our current centre backs, and each game shows just how good a decision it was to bring in Mepham.
The full-back positions are less well-covered, though, and beyond Hume and Cirkin, we don't have a huge amount of depth.
January is fast approaching, and I'd like to think that adding cover will be a priority in the transfer window.
Until then, we have the lesser-seen Leo Hjelde, who's been getting more minutes recently, and O'Nien, who could easily move out wide with Ballard or Alese filling in at centre-half.
The options are there, and with a solid back four plus two goalkeepers who've had little to do as a result, our defence is firmly set.
If this QPR match had happened last season, we'd probably have lost.
The old saying goes that if you can't do enough to win a game, don't lose it, and both draws this season, albeit in different circumstances, have shown that we can do this.
Such a resilient attitude is key in any promotion race — that is, if we're daring to dream that we're in one.
We have our defenders to thank for keeping us steady for the last thirty minutes down at QPR, and the defensive work O'Nien alluded to in his post-match comments paid off. Right now, we're scoring goals with relative ease and working hard to keep things tight at the other end, both key factors to success.
A clean sheet and a hard-fought point on the road can feel rewarding.
For Sunderland, it extended our unbeaten run to six games and marked our fourth shutout in that time. Momentum is important, and Wednesday's trip to Preston will signal the end of a strange run of four away games in five.
Avoid defeat in Lancashire, and we'll wrap up this tricky away stretch on a high note.
