I shouldn’t say this because I’ll jeopardise it, but after beating Sheffield United at home, and now that we’re passed the halfway point in the season, it’s got me thinking - could we go unbeaten at home in the league?
I know, I know, now I’ve said it out loud we’re sure to pull a stinker against Portsmouth on Sunday, or another bottom end team in classic Sunderland fashion but I remain rather hopeful. Ever since the Leeds game, in which we were all but beaten moments before some last-minute SOL madness, it’s left me heading to each home game with a confidence that no matter what, we’ll come away with at least a point.
If you look at who we’ve already played on home turf this season, we’ve played all of the other top six sides barring ourselves of course and out of 15 points available, we’ve picked up 11. It could’ve been even more if West Brom came here with any desire to play football.
And then out of all the top half teams, we’ve played most of them - only Blackburn, Watford and Swansea still to be played. Based off our home results so far, given we still haven’t been bested despite coming close at times, there is a possibility we could go the full campaign unbeaten on home soil.
The annoying thing with our impressive record so far is that we might now have an even larger target on our backs for teams coming here – as if we didn’t already! We’ve seen it time and time again where teams would come here, settle for a point by taking time off the clock from the get go, stopping the game at any given opportunity and hoping for a plucky goal at some point. Low blocks and all that.
Teams like this are the opponents we struggle against the most. When someone like Sheffield United comes to the SoL and tries to play aggressive football we can exploit their high line with our super-fast counter-attacks. It’s breaking teams down which we struggle with, when they’re camped on the edge of their own box.
Like I say, by me saying all of this we very well could stumble against someone random like Plymouth. God forbid they do the double over us. Obviously anyone can beat anyone in this league so we can’t write anyone off, but based off of the results so far on paper, we are in with a shout to unbeaten at home. Here’s to hoping…
