Turn up against the Boro? It would be nice, Sunderland

Yesterday at 01:00 AM

Sunderland have been poor over the years against Middlesbrough with a few exceptions here and there — we owe the Teessiders a good display.

This coming Saturday is an exciting one for me. I'm back up in the lovely North East for a week, and my time back starts with a first chance to see Le Bris ball in the flesh. The stars have aligned to make it so Middlesbrough is first up, and a fixture that hasn't been kind to Sunderland in recent years.

Both fixtures against Boro last year were poor from a Sunderland perspective. The 4-0 battering at the SoL was followed up by a flat 1-1 draw at the Riverside, a match that was a decent result for Michael Beale (shudder).

We've had some good battles with them in the past, with the 3-2 win and 2-2 draw in 2007/08 being highlights. The 2-0 win against them in January 2023 was another one, a prime example of Amad and Roberts linking up.

This season provides a chance to put to bed the poor performances against Michael Carrick's side behind us. Boro have had a mixed bag of a start to this season, but have only lost once, away at newly promoted Derby County. They'll provide a different challenge to that of Plymouth, and they may want to get at us more than Argyle did.

Playing Middlesbrough is one of these occasions that can be frustrating. The rhetoric over whether or not it's a derby burns bright whenever we are in the same division, and although we have had some feisty encounters it's never been a derby for me. I enjoy/ endure games against them because the atmosphere is usually pretty lively.

After a brilliant start to the season, the defeat at Plymouth should be viewed as a blip. It's important not to let the often poisonous negativity that usually surrounds this club following a loss seep into the build-up to Saturday's lunchtime kick-off.

I'll not be thinking of Anthony Patterson parrying the ball directly into danger in the dying embers in Devon because these things happen. It's a sport, and mistakes happen in sport and especially team sports like football. Patto and Ballard made uncharacteristic mistakes at Plymouth, and both will be raring to go again and put these behind them.

My first match since the dire 1-0 defeat at Watford comes after months of change on Wearside. I often go a while between Sunderland games, and that excitement of getting to one never fades. I was buzzing for the Blackburn Rovers game back on Easter Monday — that went well, didn't it?

A big crowd, a sold out away end, a banner display, and a new ethos that is being slowly built by Regis Le Bris are all ingredients for a good contest on Saturday.

There's absolutely no point in dwelling on a narrow loss when there are over 40 games and plenty of points still to play for, so I'm going into the match with a glass-half-full attitude that has often followed me into Sunderland games, which is a surprise considering we've been feckin' awful for most of my life.