Roker Roundtable: Are you panicking about Sunderland’s situation or remaining calm?

Q: After the disappointment on Saturday it appears some panic - rightly or wrongly - has set in amongst some supporters, whilst others are trying their best to remain calm. What about you - how are you feeling?

Craig Davies says...

The only panic I saw on Saturday was on the pitch of play, where hazardous defending and anxious play led to disastrous goals from which we could not recover.

Post match of course, with such an array of supporters from every facet of life, opinions will vary wildly from ‘it’s a one off,’ to ‘we’ve been papering over the cracks for ages,’ right down to the ‘we’re doomed’ school of thought. That just natural.

As professionals, my hope is that the lads most definitely don’t take the result and use it as a stick to beat themselves with. Losing your edge and bottle at this stage of the season is disastrous, so I’d love believe the entire squad are rightly temporarily angry at themselves, but use it as a line in the sand to motivate them onto better things.

The lottery of the play offs is making me feel ill at the very thought, and none of the teams around us will be biting their finger nails about playing us after Saturday’s chaotic melee, especially Pompey, who seem to have something over us this season.

With 9 games to go, I figured we needed to win 7 from 9 to go up automatically. According to my very unscientific mathematical prophecy, we just dropped those two lose-able games and now must win every match from now on.

I’m not panicking - nothing like it. But I haven’t booked the open top bus in either.

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Chris Sparks says...

Panic is normal within a fan base as large as ours, but that is partly down to how terrific our form has been this season. This was our first defeat at home and only our third all season, and the familiarity of picking up points has become the norm, making results like this weekend all the more hard to take.

It’s important in competitive sport to take the positives from a performance. Scoring four goals, both strikers getting on the scoresheet and starting to build an effective partnership are perhaps the only that we can take.

Moreover, it’s imperative not to dwell on the mistakes and annoyances from the game. We’re in the business end of the season and our squad have done remarkably well to maintain a positive and confident mentality this campaign.

As Jack Ross said in his post-match press conference, 2nd place is still in our hands, we are more than capable of winning all our remaining games, with Portsmouth perhaps the biggest game in recent history at the end of this month.

I have faith in this squad and this manager that we can get over the finish line and claim second spot with the likes of Lee Cattermole, Aiden McGeady and Adam Matthews ready to return to full time action in the near future - we need all the help to use the full depth of our squad.

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Mark Carrick says...

Panic may be a strong word, but concern is clearly evident.

At 3pm on Saturday we were second, albeit by a point, and by 5pm we sit two behind Barnsley, level with Portsmouth and only one ahead of the current form team, Charlton.

Rightly that change in situation has many fearing the worst.

Every time Sunderland get the chance to take control, we seem to let it slip. We need to win games and after making it look so simple last week, we now have dropped five points from teams we should have performed better against.

The concern is we now face Doncaster, Peterborough and Portsmouth - tougher games on paper. Every game now becomes must-win, or we enter the lottery of the Play-Offs. I, for one, don’t fancy playing Portsmouth or Charlton in that mini-competition.

It’s ever so tight at the top and could swing for any of the four teams below Luton. We can still do this, but we have to improve defensively and get McGeady back to fitness, if we to grab that coveted second place.

Personally, I’m not in panic-mode but I recognise our confidence has been shaken amongst as a fanbase.

We have to hope the Coventry result has not had the same impact in the dressing room.