SOUTH Shields-born Sunderland supporter Phil Brown became the latest manager to join the Blacks Cats' fan club at the weekend, endorsing the club's promotion credentials after seeing his Hull City side disposed of at the Stadium of Light.
Goals at the very start and very end of Saturday's game gave the Wearsiders their 10th win in 13 games and Brown reckons the Red and Whites are the team to watch in the Championship promotion push.
He said: "Sunderland have got a great chance of goi
ng up in my opinion and that's full credit to Roy Keane and his backroom staff.
"I think they were nervy so long as the score stayed at 1-0, but they tried to carry on doing the right things and it paid off for them in the end.
"They are good at the basics and I think that if they are not going to go up automatically, they will be the favourites in the play-offs – they've had the money to buy good players and it shows."
Brown made it clear that, despite his schoolboy allegiances to Sunderland, he was desperate for Hull to notch their third win in a row to bolster their fight to beat the drop.
And he revealed that the 40-strong Brown clan of family and friends at the match had all gone into the away end.
"The bottom line is that Hull City pay my wages and I wanted to get something from the game for them," he said.
"I had no divided loyalties – I was bitterly disappointed that we lost the game."
He was delighted with his own players' efforts, but lamented their failure to find the killer pass or fine finish at the business end of the pitch.
"I was impressed, more than impressed, by the endeavour and the passion the players showed, but the thing that let us down was our quality in the final third," he reflected.
"I don't think we created many clear-cut chances even though we did have opportunities to do that – the quality of the final ball just wasn't there on the day.
"It has been in our recent games, but it just didn't happen for us this time.
"I'm not blaming the front three in any way, I just think the pressure of the situation and the conditions with the swirling conditions and the pitch didn't help.
"When you consider we went a goal behind at a very early stage to a very good side in this division, a team that is pushing for promotion – it was never going to be easy for us.
"I'm just disappointed that we shot ourselves in the foot because we'd told the players not to give silly free-kicks away around the area, then they go and do exactly that from almost the first whistle and we're a goal down straight away.
"It's a learning curve for the players coming to a place like the Stadium of Light and they've got to learn not to be overawed – they have to apply pressure of their own, have the courage of their convictions and realise they've earned the right to be playing at grounds like this because, on the day, we didn't play to our strengths.
"Having said that, I'm not going to complain too much because they worked very hard.
"I had a few players out there playing with pain-killing injections and everyone giving their all.
"And with that sort of attitude, I'm confident we'll stay up this season."
