At this stage of the season every game is massively important. In fact, if we have a league game which isn’t massively important between now and the end of the season, then it will mean that we have ballsed everything up.
Today we have a by no means easy game, but one that we should be confident that we can win. Manchester City drew 1-1 at Sunderland a couple of weeks ago, while Liverpool were beaten by Bent and the beach ball earlier on in the season. So they’re no mugs, but we’ve picked up far more points on the road this season than we normally manage and should be confident against this level of team.
Under normal circumstances you’d say that a draw would be a decent result, but there aren’t normal circumstances and we really need a win to put the pressure on Liverpool away at Birmingham and Manchester City away at Burnley.
As always seems to be the way these days, we’ve so many injuries that it’s anyone’s guess what the team will be. Huddlestone, Corluka and Dawson are out, which I guess will mean that we will play Wilson Palacios if he’s fit, which is in doubt. Kaboul will have to step in for Dawson alongside Bassong, so he won’t be able to play the holding role in midfield.
If Palacios isn’t fit then we’ll have no choice but to field one of our youngsters in central midfield alongside Luka Modric. It’s quite remarkable that we’ve gone on a run of five consecutive league wins amidst so many injuries and if we make it six, it will be even more of an achievement and the first time that we’ve won that amount of consecutive league games since finishing third in 1990.
All eyes will be on Darren Bent for Sunderland. He missed a penalty to gain some revenge against us at White Hart Lane this season and will be busting a gut to prove to Harry that he’s more of a match for Sandra. With our defence likely to include a brand new central defensive partnership of Kaboul and Bassong, alongside the rookie Kyle Walker, we will have our work cut out to keep a clean sheet.
Still, the scoring-one-more-than-the-opposition style of defending has always one we’ve been comfortable with. Defoe is back and will compete for a place alongside the currently prolific Pavlyuchenko, with Gudjohnsen also in great form and Crouch having scored against Portsmouth. The one area where we aren’t short of options at the moment is in attack, so we’ve got to make the most of what we’ve got and play an attacking game.
Come on you Spurs!
We actually scored two more than you. Bent 2 Tottenham 0
Uh, try that scare again mate.
It could easily have been 7 -4 as a result. Too many of your lads wrote us off without realising how our injury list had held us back but we have generally performed well against the better teams.
Those of you who scorn Bent should be saying he didn’t work for us but he has scored 23 goals so far in what for most of the season has been a team stretched to breaking point.
[…] Sunderland v Tottenham: We're Gonna Score One More Than You […]
“should be confident against this level of team.”
This level of team that you got a lucky win against at WHL and who should have beaten you 6-0 at the SOL if it wasn’t for Bent’s misses and a ref that writes a perfectly good goal off whilst allowing your goal that came about due to a blatant foul.
Maybe you should wait till you actually achieve something in the Prem before making such arrogant remarks, no the wonder you are known as the NUFC of the South.
I’m aware that this probably comes over as arrogant. What I actually meant to get across, is that Sunderland is a team, that in theory, we COULD beat away from home.
I by no means thought we’d definitely win the game, but there was a possibility and we should be positive – unlike if we were to play at Old Trafford for example.