Black Cats Win Fight For Fitness

The Black Cats have had a boost this week with Fabio Borini, John O’Shea, Youness Kaboul and Ola Toivonen all deemed fit again. Unfortunately the Southampton game will come too early for Lee Cattermole who is still out. It’s hoped he’ll return ready for Crystal Palace on 23rd November 2015.

The fitness boost is certainly timely as, defensively at least, Sunderland were abysmal against Everton gifting the Toffees goals galore, despite the Black Cats battling to equalise from 2-0 down. Do we need a reminder that eventually six goals were eventually conceded? Nope. Sorry.

Sam Allardyce claims it took two days for him to get over the result but it’s become an all too familiar feeling for Sunderland supporters. We just can’t sustain a run without conceding goals. The game plan, as I understood it under Big Sam, was to tighten up defensively and try and get a few clean sheets. It was working too, as arguably West Brom’s goal shouldn’t have stood and the derby resulted in a clean sheet. All was good until the players seemed to get carried away with the euphoria of getting back into the Everton game and went too gung-ho.

Big Sam also turns his attention to the monitoring of player contacts this week. There’s never a moment’s peace for a Sunderland Manager is there? Allarydce had this to say on the subject:

“It’s a bit too early to be dishing out new contracts in the position we’re in. If a senior player is out of contract then he has to prove something, prove he is worthy of a new contract. It means he has to be a massive contributor the team. If he can do that, then he can negotiate from power. If he has kept us up – then we will probably want to keep him.”

The young starlet Duncan Watmore seems to be the player that Sunderland are most keen to tie down to a new deal and it’s no wonder as he is surely destined for great things. Admittedly he’s had limited game time but when he has appeared, he has often shown his senior teammates how it’s done. The England U21 star has bags of endeavour and never seems to get tired of harrying the opposition. Importantly he has an eye for a goal, always has that essential pace and a dash of trickery to cause the opposing team concern. Jermain Defoe has likened the former Altrincham player’s substitute appearances to a ‘weapon’ and I’d agree wholeheartedly. It’s just a shame that the Watmore ‘weapon’ isn’t used more in my view.

Now the squad has recovered from its few injury concerns, what type of performance will we get this weekend? Let’s hope it’s a more solid affair if nothing else. Still not panicking. Honest.