Sunderland’s Impressive Start: Why this season feels different for promotion hopes

After decades of watching Sunderland, I’m probably among a group who, up until now, haven’t been carried away by our flying start to the season. We’ve had so many false dawns over the years where, as a fanbase, we’ve felt we’d turned a corner, and I’ve heard the phrase, “Does anyone else feel we’re on the verge of something special?” so often that, instead of feeling optimistic, I get déjà vu and wait for it all to fall apart. As a Sunderland fan, you get conditioned to expect the customary collapse in fortunes.

And being Sunderland, it inevitably does, with the record books showing that there have, in fact, been very few of those “special seasons” in, well… most people’s living memory.

But what we’re witnessing on the pitch this season is changing my mind. Of course, being five points clear at the top of the table helps anyone’s outlook, but there’s more to it than just the standings.

One of the meanest defences in the league has given the team a solid base and confidence every time they walk out onto the pitch. And even though, apart from the Sheffield Wednesday game, we haven’t exactly demolished teams, we’ve scored more goals than anyone else in the Championship — a lot more, in fact — even more than the teams that were tipped as favourites to go up this year.

Everyone’s feeling optimistic after three consecutive wins, which we actually managed just last season en route to finishing fourth after ten games. That’s part of the reason why I, and probably quite a few others, have had such tempered optimism before the start of last week. But it’s the manner of those three consecutive wins that has finally started turning my head.

Our two away wins last week were both impressive in my view, yet they were completely different performances, almost the opposite of each other, with Régis Le Bris applying a different tactical approach to each.

At Hull, we controlled the game for much of the first half, with the home team opting to mount some incisive counterattacks. Overall, though, I thought we created the better chances on the night, and Wilson Isidor’s winner was a classic, well-worked breakaway.

Luton presented a totally different test, giving us a lesson in high pressing along with their expected aerial bombardment to keep us under pressure for long stretches of the game. Despite this, they didn’t actually create much to really threaten our goal. Again, I thought we created the better chances, but this game included a passage of play that impressed me even more than anything in our three wins last week.

Right after Luton’s equaliser, there was a stretch where we took the game by the scruff of the neck, going on the attack for another goal. The team looked like they were thinking, “We’re getting a winner, and you’re not going to stop us,” and it felt almost inevitable when Mundle smashed in his brilliant shot to the far corner.

For me, that is a sign of a really good team—one that looks like they know they’re going to score. And it’s usually only the best teams in their respective leagues that manage to do this.

On top of that, our work off the ball has been outstanding this season. We’re well-organised, and everyone seems to know their jobs, which has limited most opponents to scrambling for whatever chances they can get. And when we go forward, you can see the work that’s been done on the training pitch, instead of, in Luke O’Nien’s words, “giving the ball to our most dangerous players and seeing what happens,” as we sometimes did in previous seasons.

Saturday was the perfect combination of these elements working together against a poor Oxford team, who posed little threat and were carved open at will. Some argue that Oxford didn’t provide the test that previous opponents did, but there will be other sides this season who don’t give us much of a fight. And if we can dispatch them just as efficiently, who’s going to complain if we’re picking up the points?

The way our head coach has set the team up feels sustainable over the long season ahead, if you get what I mean — because the basics are so sound, we have a strong foundation that should keep us steady through any rough patches.

Of course, there’s still a long way to go, and there will be setbacks. But my outlook has shifted. I started the season thinking I’d be surprised if we finished in the top two, but now I’m confident we’ll be in the top six — and probably even higher. Not quite the full optimism of automatic promotion yet, I know, but my Sunderland fan’s built-in pessimism is giving way bit by bit.

There were other teams that were considered favourites for promotion before the season started, like Burnley and Sheffield United, but we’re leaving them trailing at the moment. And look what Ipswich managed last season when they got off to a flyer.

So I’m finally off the fence. A Sunderland promotion campaign?

This feels like more than just a bright start — it’s game on!

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