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Even though we didn’t play badly at the weekend, once again we didn’t take a chance to climb out of the bottom three and that’s so frustrating.
I couldn’t believe Slaven Bilic’s comments after the game saying West Ham deserved to win. What game was he watching? Yes, they hit the woodwork twice through Mark Noble and Andy Carroll but Sunderland more than deserved a point from the game as we had our chances too.
Jermain Defoe had two very good chances in the second-half as well as Jack Rodwell having that chance which went to Adrian’s feet still haunting me. What else is haunting me is not keeping clean sheets. If we don’t keep more clean sheets we have a very high chance of getting relegated.
Bottom line though is that we lost on Saturday but apart from Bournemouth drawing, results went our way. I can understand the argument that we shouldn’t rely on other teams and I hate that we sometimes have to do that, but unfortunately we have to in our position.
Sunderland are presented with another opportunity this week to get out of the relegation zone and it’s vital that we actually take it this time.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few shocks in the other midweek fixtures. I think Villa and Bournemouth will win and whilst Newcastle are shocking away from St James’ Park, they are not going to reach the end of the season without picking up another away point. Since they came up, Swansea have only lost once at the Emirates and they have a decent record there, winning two of the last four meetings. Norwich at home are ok and Chelsea don’t win many games.
As for the Crystal Palace game, they have a lot of pace in their side - especially with Yannick Bolasie back - and we don’t need reminding of the game at the Stadium of Light last season where he scored a hat-trick. I know being at home means we’ll be expected to attack but they are better away from home to counter attack with pace on the break. If the fans get edgy about us not throwing ten men forward they need to remember how quick they can hurt us. If we over-commit against them then they'll almost certainly hurt us.
We proved when we played them in November we can beat them and I think IF we do win it’ll be an ugly scrappy one.
I would gladly take that as long as we are on twenty-six points come ten o’clock tomorrow night.
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