Source: Northern_Echo
Birmingham City 2 Sunderland 0
FIRST the good news, Sunderland are not one of the three worst teams in the Premier League. Now the bad, if they carry on playing as they are at the moment, there is every chance they could be relegated anyway.[LNB] With every week that passes, and every new defeat that piles itself on top of the last, the Black Cats sink deeper and deeper into the mire.[LNB] We just need one more win, says manager Steve Bruce, and with games running out, you suspect he's probably right. The problem is that he could have said the same thing at the end of January, and if the win hasn't come yet, why should it suddenly appear in the final five matches of the season[LNB] The statistics are damning, with Sunderland having claimed one point from the last available 27, the worst return of any side in the league by a distance.[LNB] At the start of February, 11 places separated them from the bottom three. By the beginning of March, the gap was still nine. On April 2, after they were thrashed at Manchester City, the safety cushion was seven.[LNB] Today, in the wake of a 2-0 defeat to relegation rivals Birmingham City, just two teams stand between the Black Cats and oblivion. And one of them, Wigan Athletic, visit the Stadium of Light this weekend.[LNB] True, a five-point cushion still represents a decent enough insurance policy, but on the evidence of Saturday's events at St Andrew's, relegation can no longer be shrugged off as a remote possibility.[LNB] This Sunderland team can definitely go down, and the fear is that the enormity of the situation has still not really translated itself to a group of players who had accumulated 37 points by January 22 and no doubt considered themselves safe.[LNB] While the likes of Wigan, Wolves and West Ham have been steeling themselves for a relegation fight all season, the Black Cats have sleepwalked into a situation that threatens to derail the entire rebuilding project overseen, at considerable expense, by owner Ellis Short.[LNB] This was not meant to happen, and as a result, it is pertinent to question whether Sunderland's players are mentally prepared for the intense examination they are about to receive in the run in.[LNB] Perhaps it does feel that this has happened quite quickly, said skipper Lee Cattermole, who briefly flirted with relegation with his former club, Middlesbrough, in the 2007-08 season. It's a little bit like that.[LNB] We still haven't talked about it (relegation). All we really want to do is put an end to this bad run. We're not thinking about getting relegated, all we're thinking about is winning games and trying to finish in the top half of the table. That is still our aim.[LNB] We have two home games coming up and two wins would put us back in the top half. That has to be where we are looking. Perhaps if those games don't go our way, then we may have to start looking the other way. We didn't expect to be down in this situation, but we need to deal with it and get out of it as soon as possible.[LNB] Yet for all the pre-rehearsed positivity, Saturday's defeat contained a number of warning signs that do not augur well ahead of home games with Wigan, Fulham and Wolves, and away matches at Bolton and West Ham.[LNB] Relegated sides do not always play badly, but crucially, the outcome of a game tends to be the same whether they play well or not.[LNB] For large chunks of their 13th defeat of the season, the Black Cats were superior to their opponents. They were certainly much better than they had been in their previous game with West Brom, but it mattered not a jot as goals from Sebastian Larsson and Craig Gardner left them empty-handed. Somehow or other, teams who survive tend to get the job done.[LNB] There were major areas of concern at either end of the field, with one worry relating to confidence and the other flagging up issues of commitment.[LNB] Confidence first, and Bruce must decide whether to stand by 22-year-old goalkeeper Simon Mignolet, who was at fault for both Birmingham goals.[LNB] The first, which came towards the end of the first half, featured a dreadful mix up between Mignolet and Phil Bardsley, with the goalkeeper calling to collect Cameron Jerome's flick on, the full-back pulling out of his challenge as a result, and Larsson nipping between the two of them to bundle the ball home.[LNB] The final touch might well have come off Bardsley, but it didn't really make any difference. The magnitude of the mistake was immediately apparent.[LNB] Mignolet should also have done better with Birmingham's second, a long-range strike from Gardner that he palmed into the corner of the net, and with Craig Gordon's second knee operation having been delayed, Bruce must decide whether to go with goalkeeping experience next weekend.[LNB] Things at the opposite end of the pitch are even worse, with Asamoah Gyan and Stephane Sessegnon both turning in excruciatingly poor performances at St Andrew's.[LNB] While Cattermole, Jordan Henderson and Jack Colback tore here, there and everywhere in an attempt to turn things around, Gyan ambled around with an air of undisguised disinterest, while Sessegnon was every bit as ineffectual as he has been in all nine of his appearances in a Sunderland shirt.[LNB] That inevitably places pressure on the rest of the Sunderland midfield, which, as a unit, has scored less goals in the last two seasons than Gardner has managed in the current campaign.[LNB] Henderson came close with a shot that whistled past the upright, and the impressive Ben Foster made fine saves from Gyan and Cattermole.[LNB] However, the Black Cats have now scored two goals in six matches, and if that statistic is to improve, the onus will surely be on Gyan to play the leading role.[LNB] He undoubtedly has the talent to go on a scoring spree, but his demeanour at the weekend smacked of detachment. Anyone who saw Newcastle United tumble out of the top-flight two seasons ago will know that a comparison with Obafemi Martins is not meant to be flattering.[LNB] We've only won one out of the last nine games, so I can understand why the fans are getting a bit nervous, said Cattermole. They want to see us winning. I can't say that we won't get relegated, you never know, we still might. But we have to produce the goods to make sure that doesn't happen. It's going to take bottle and character in the dressing room, but the lads aren't deflated at all.[LNB]
