A trip to the Forest - NFFC v SAFC Preview
Following on from Sunderland’s hard earned draw against Aston Villa, the lads travel to the City Ground in the hope of continuing their brilliant start to the season. The journey will be without Renilido Mandava who picked up a silly red card against Villa and Habib Diarra after the club confirmed a 2-3 month injury lay off for the midfielder with Chris Rigg expected to deputise. Meanwhile Forest will be without key centre back Murillo and influential midfielder Douglas Luiz. They will however have the ever impressive Elliot Anderson and Morgan Gibbs-White available who Sunderland will need to manage well.
See the forest for the trees?
An advantage Sunderland take into the game on Saturday is that Forrest began they journey in the Europa League on Wednesday evening and faced a tough game away from home against Real Betis. Greek-Australian boss Ange Posticoglu has had a tough start to life as Forrest Manager and is yet to pick up a win since he took over from Nuno Espírito Santo in controversial circumstances. Forrest have little time to recover and did begin to look tired towards the end of the game. Big Ange’s style of football is highly demanding, highly attacking football, a style which garnished a lot of admiration in his first season as Spurs manager but the affection quickly wore off in his 2nd Season, will take its toll on any squad. While Forrest have a lot of pace in the team and are very dangerous, the defensive high line employed by the head coach may play right into the hands of Regis Le Bris.
Sunderland will be happy to sit back and soak up pressure, they have to be able to break out and create chances though. While it’s something that has been successful for the lads so far at home, we haven’t really got a fair measure of our away performances. 2 away games so far has produced 1 point, 0 goals scored and 2 goals conceded. Picking up the odd win away from home can be and is crucial to surviving in the Premier League. After 3 home games, you can see 3 consistent performances 2 of which has resulted in wins and the impressive draw against Villa. While a point against Forrest certainly should not be sniffed at, the longer we go without an away win, it will only make it harder to secure one.
Momentum Shift
In the grand scheme of things it’s early days still, but we’ve started well and we need to push on with the momentum we have and keep it going as long as possible. We will have a blip, we will have a few games where we just can’t quite get going. We bounced back well from Burnley and despite the adversity of being down to 10 men, we bounced back in the Villa Game and came from behind to beat Brentford. So the resilience in the team doesn’t worry me.
We are creeping up to that 10 game marker where the table starts to take shape and the table doesn’t lie. You are where you deserve to be based on your results. So far Sunderland are the best performing promoted team and while some have pointed towards our fixture list as helping the cause, that’s neither a criticism or a constructive point. To prove the point, it’s like if a bus is due at 12:04pm and it turns up at 12:04pm, do you get on and say the driver was helped by the timetable? Of course not, the fixture list is the fixture list. When, where and how you play teams is completely circumstantial. All you can do is assess what is front of you. So, to go back to the bus analogy, if the bus is late, do you think that’s because the timetable worked against the driver?
Predictions
I don’t anticipate many changes, I think Le Fee works well defensively and this will support Masuaku, who should come in for Renilido, and is probably a better option then Adingra in this game. Although I did enjoy Talbi’s little shift to the left against Villa. I think we will see Le Fee continue on the left. Other than that I think we will see the same starting 11. I think the way Sunderland play may catch Forrest out and cause them problems but they have to able to soak up the pressure and break effectively. Something we have been able to do at home but we are yet to see it away from home. I feel this is an opportunity to pinch a win against a side which is still struggling to find its identity.
