Source: Northern_Echo
Bruce anxious to avoid repeat of last season’s 14-game stutter
TWELVE months after Sunderland's impressive start to a Premier League season began to stutter, manager Steve Bruce has warned his players to avoid a repeat.[LNB] Given the injuries sustained by Michael Turner and Titus Bramble, Bruce accepts it will not be easy to maintain the momentum which has seen them climb to seventh.[LNB] But, rather than slip into a 14-match winless run, as they did at this time last year, Bruce has revealed how he wants the Black Cats to focus on doubling their points tally in the next 14 games.[LNB] That would mean starting with a positive result at Wolves today.[LNB] Sunderland are looking to make it five matches undefeated since the crushing 5-1 defeat at Newcastle United on October 31.[LNB] Even in the absence of two of his key defenders, Bruce is satisfied he has a much better equipped crop of players than he had 12 months ago to cope with injuries and suspensions.[LNB] It's the same time of year, it's quite incredible, said Bruce. At times we had Lorik Cana and Nyron Nosworthy at centre-half last season.[LNB] That way I think we're better off, but we are at exactly the same point as last year with 20 points, then we had that horrible run.[LNB] It was frustrating. We lost games by the odd one and drew seven. It was incredible.[LNB] The Premier League can do that to you.[LNB] This season when we have expected to get a result we haven't, and we have to arrest that mentality.[LNB] For the next 14 games if we get another 20 points that would set us up nicely for the spring. I just hope our problems don't bother us.[LNB] The one area where I wanted to make sure we were stronger was defensively and we have done that.[LNB] Now they are all getting injured. I just hope we can cope.[LNB] Despite the non-availability of Turner and Bramble, Bruce still seems reluctant to hand Paraguayan defender Paulo Da Silva an opportunity to prove himself.[LNB] Da Silva's only appearance in the Premier League this season was in is the 1-0 defeat at West Brom in August, which fuels the belief that he has struggled to settle since moving from Mexico in the summer of last year.[LNB] Bruce would prefer to gamble on the fitness of John Mensah, who is not due back from a dislocated shoulder for a couple more weeks, rather than call up Da Silva.[LNB] And even if Mensah was missing at Molineux, Anton Ferdinand and Nedum Onuoha are likely to be the partnership at the heart of the defence that Bruce would opt for.[LNB] Bruce said: He's a very, very good player. The only problem Da Silva has is coming up against the big strikers.[LNB] At the World Cup there was no real big player, and the teams don't play like Wolves and try to bash him up.[LNB] In Mexico it's all tippytappy stuff and little players, the same at the World Cup.[LNB] Against Spain at the World Cup he was magnificent, but against anyone like a Stoke or Bolton or a Wolves or a Blackburn, he physically can't deal with that aerial stuff, he struggles.[LNB]
