So our start to the season

No man is an island ....

What’s that got to do with anything? Point is that other teams have other expectations. A point at the sol was good for Oxford for instance, so why is it comparable to us?
Tuesday is a big game IMO , win and we will start to push on, lose and we are back to where we started . If we are going to get promoted we need to put runs together and today has given us the perfect platform to do that

I agree. Runs are the key, as Luton and Charlton showed last season. And it’s something we never did last year
 


From half time last Saturday it has been a great week.

A couple of good signings will see the optimism grow amongst fans and players alike.

Oh and yes we are unbeaten despite a tricky set of fixtures.
 
You can spin it how you like, bottom line we should have beaten Oxford and that permoance against Ipswich was up there with the worst I’ve seen. Today we rode our luck a bit but managed a great result.
Yes, we performed poorly against both Oxford and Ipswich, but somehow managed to gain some points from these poor performances. That is what most successful teams do.

Similarly, today’s performance was far less than perfect, but was an incremental improvement over the Ipswich game and again we picked up the points.

The real world is not a predictable computer simulation of a ‘Top Trumps’ type of game, in which winning is determined by being better in certain pre-determined categories. Thus :-
‘Sunderland is bigger/spends more /has more ‘history’. Therefore SAFC should always invariably defeat Oxford United’

In the real world, other human factors come into play - form, mistakes, a decision to do one thing rather do a slightly different thing. It makes it unpredictable and interesting and why we bother to be engaged by the game.

So we might all be reasonably predicting an easy win against traditionally lowly Rochdale, but 70% possession and hitting the post three times, but then the ball bouncing off Wyke’s backside past a wrong-footed McLaughlin from a last minute corner could run against the prediction. These things happen, but tend to even themselves out over the longer term of the season. Embrace it !
 
It's results that matter and we've not looked great but got them, surgery with the new squads formation options has already occurred and hopefully failed experiments ditched - reason to believe we will flourish from here, and two of our six pointers are out of the way already. Difficult to know whether to be down on the performances or up on the results and progress. I wonder what the bookies think? They have us as favourites now when we were not before and have Portsmouth and Ipswich as 2nd and 3rd with Oxford not too far adrift. Suggests our opening tariff has been difficult. People talking about other teams relative league positions in a 3 match table though - wow give your heeds a shake.

My biggest concern is that neither Wyke nor Grigg so far look like being our top scorer which adds a lot of pressure to other positions to get us results and that we are 'wafer thin' on left backs. But we have a very competent keeper, a solid defence when its organised and a midfield with strong hints it could become much more creative as time goes on..
 
2 points per game is par for probable promotion so we are 1 point down.

You could argue we’ve played 2 of the likely promotion rivals but you could also argue that having two home games and one away game means 7 points would have been par.

Our performances are patchy and players are making mistakes but that’s what early season teams do generally so I’m not overly concerned.
 
I'm tempted to say poor. Opening game at home, poor performance and two points dropped. Massively lucky to get a point away and then finally some semblance of a game plan gets two wins on the bounce.

Looking at fixtures for August and September and the team we would expect to have by now will be racking up 6/7 wins out of 8. What we do get will be a good guide to whether Ross will get us up.
 
5 points out of 9 isn't a dreadful return considering that we've played 2 of our likely promotion rivals but the performances are still a concern. On the plus side Ozturk and Willis looked like they could be a really good partnership yesterday and hopefully the result gives the team more confidence.
 
5 points out of 9 isn't a dreadful return considering that we've played 2 of our likely promotion rivals but the performances are still a concern. On the plus side Ozturk and Willis looked like they could be a really good partnership yesterday and hopefully the result gives the team more confidence.
Talking partnerships Maguire and Geads looked to have an understanding, for whatever reason they never seemed to play in the team together much last season. Hopefully there can be a sustained run with them two and McNulty up front.
 
Points wise it’s a decent return, performance wise it hasn’t been good. We were poor against oxford, poor against Ipswich and imo first half yesterday we were poor. Second half I thought we looked better even though we didn’t create a lot, it looks like we’ve finally found a CB pairing which is good and I thought overall we deserved the win against a promotion rival which is a big positive. We’ve got two nicer games coming up this week and if we get 6 points then we could have a bit of momentum behind us
 
10 wins in 30 games. Winning 1 in 3 isn’t too 2 form but we need to start getting wins and not draws. I was for Ross out but he’s starting to win me over
 
Defence looked more solid today and the frontline was creative with McNulty on the pitch, midfield was steady with good cover on the bench.
Confidence from the last two results gives them something to build on
Yes absolutely. Thought Willis was excellent and Ozturk looked decent too. We just need a natural left back and return McLaughlin to right back and we’ll be sorted defensively IMO.
 
People don't realise it's a tough start. I'd of taken 5 points at the end his stage, just thought our win would be against Oxford and the draw against pompey.
 
We've yet to play well. That result papers over the cracks. Dress it up anyway you like but unless there's a dramatic change in team performance our individual matchwinners will dry up and we'll fall short of the promotion spots again.
 

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