Sunderland's Festive Run: Highs, Lows, and Promising Signs for Promotion
Yesterday at 01:00 AM
Ten points from five games over the festive period and New Year highlight Sunderland's resilience and readiness to push for Championship glory.
With the festive fixtures now in the rearview mirror, the Yuletide decorations packed away, and the Celebrations and Madris reluctantly replaced with protein bars and kale smoothies, it seems like a good time to look back on what is generally considered a crucial time in the season for the Championship promotion race.
Bookended by the hard-fought home win over Norwich and the, erm, hard-fought home win over Portsmouth, these five games serve as a microcosm showcasing what this Sunderland team is capable of; the sublime, the ridiculous, and everything in between.
The final fixture before Christmas was the so-called "friendly trophy" contest against the Canaries. You have to give credit to Borja Sainz, who might have single-handedly put to bed any previous camaraderie that might have existed with the Norfolk club. The hilariously ill-advised half-time tweet from a Norwich fan claiming that he had "rattled" our fanbase aged like milk after Ballard and Bellingham completed the second-half turnaround, giving us a welcome festive boost and keeping our excellent home record going. Away from the pitch, this was my first trip to recently opened Three Stories pub, a nice versatile addition to the pre-match boozing options, so it was a merry Christmas all around.
Next up was the Boxing Day trip to Blackburn, which had the potential to be an all-timer away day given our enormous ticket allocation and the proximity of the two sides in the table. Our minibus stopped off pre-match at Burnley Cricket Club, where we received a warm welcome in a classic example of the enemy of your enemy being your friend. The game didn't quite live up to the billing despite being an entertaining spectacle for the neutral, with Blackburn's late equaliser added to the litany of kicks our teeth have taken this taken, but a point was a decent return overall given the hosts' recent unbeaten run.
If Blackburn's equaliser was a kick in the choppers, the Stoke game was a veritable sledgehammer to the nether regions. I audibly groaned when the news flashed up that they'd removed Narcís Pelach and placed Ryan Shawcross in interim charge, and the game couldn't have gone any more to script. A scrappy and resilient Stoke team held out against a profligate Sunderland, racking up literally more cards than I received for Christmas before nicking the points late on thanks to a goal from a striker perennially linked to Sunderland. Absolutely textbook. Most people near me in the away end were fuming when it was 0-0, so you can imagine the mood when we realised we wouldn't even be leaving with one lousy point. The only positive was that I managed to jump on an earlier train home, spending as little time in Stoke as humanly possible.
There was no time to feel sorry for ourselves with the New Year's Day visit of Sheffield United round the corner. The frankly ridiculous 8pm kick off time did at least afford plenty of pre-match festivities; we enjoyed a pricey but delicious steak dinner at Ember in Sheepfolds, another great entry to the Wearside hospitality scene. The news of Burnley and Leeds dropping points felt like a real boost to morale, and the Lads produced one of the best performances of the season to beat one of the league's toughest opponents in The Blades. It was so over, but then we were so back.
Finally, the unconvincing win over Portsmouth rounded off a solid return of ten points from the five games, on par with the famous two-points-per-game ratio for promotion chasers. While we were easily the better side, the lack of cutting edge and ominous signs of defensive sloppiness were somewhat concerning, though you can absolutely forgive the Lads for needing a break after successfully navigating one of the most rigorous periods of the season.
As we look ahead to 2025, there's no real need for any dramatic "New Year, New Sunderland" resolutions. Some clever new signings to give our excellent Head Coach coupled with a bit more luck on the injury front should give us every chance of making it a year to remember.
