Phil Smith's verdict: The typically dramatic 48 hours in League One that vindicated a key Jack Ross message about Sunderland and promotion

It started with a brutal encounter at Adams Park against Wycombe Wanderers, Gareth Ainsworth’s side leaving Sunderland nursing all manner of wounds.

That game had, of course, come just days after the second trip in as many weeks to Bristol.

Then came the 0-0 draw at Oakwell, a testing game against a powerful side who had not lost at home all season.

Throw in Storm Gareth and a raging wind that penned in the away side for a relentless opening 45 minutes, and you can understand why Jack Ross felt this visit of Walsall, themselves scrapping for survival, would be a challenge.

He knew fine well how important it was that his side found a way to win.

Those two points had left Sunderland still in the hunt but a touch off the pace.

They have ended up an awful lot worse but significantly better, too.

By the time the Black Cats return to league action, Barnsley will have had two further opportunities to open up a gap to second.

Failure to win here would have led to a fortnight of understandable anxiety on Wearside and taken the edge off growing Wembley excitement.

But win Sunderland did.

And it was a win they deserved, over the course of 90 minutes.

Defensively they started very poorly, and those key positions at the heart of the back four are perhaps the one area that Ross will still be weighing up his best options at this stage of the season.

That is certainly one area in which Barnsley and Luton Town have an advantage.

There will be frustrations, too, that Sunderland have not been able to create more of the kind of openings for Will Grigg that the Northern Irishman took with such decisiveness with 20 minutes to go.

That, it must be said, should improve quickly when George Honeyman and Chris Maguire return to the fold in the coming weeks and Charlie Wyke should take confidence from an encouraging cameo.

Nevertheless, by half time they had by far the best of the openings and that continued into the second period.

Aside from the previous two tricky away games, that has been an encouraging trend since the woeful showings at Scunthorpe and Oxford United.

Ross will feel that this 24 hours in which the automatic promotion race turned again was also a vindication of the message he has continuously stood behind.

With nine games to game, it is obvious that Luton and Barnsley will feel very good about their place in the table.

Ross, though, has said all along that his Sunderland side are better than they have often had credit for .

As for the automatic promotion race, he has been insistent that there will be many twists and turns before the end of the regular season.

He understands the anxiety that stems from the desire to get Sunderland back to the top two tiers, but probably also feels it can overplay the strengths of other sides and the weaknesses of his.

Perception is everything, and while Barnsley are on a long unbeaten run with six consecutive clean sheets, the 0-0 draw with Doncaster Rover on Friday night means they have also now drawn four of those six.

In the absence of Kieffer Moore, all four of those have been games in which Daniel Stendel’s side have failed to score.

They are a good, powerful side, but not an infallible one.

Ross had been particularly bullish about this on Thursday.

He said that it was dramatic to say automatic promotion was out of Sunderland’s hands, that they should have gone for broke days previous at Barnsley.

He wasn’t convinced that it would take too much more than the two-points-per-game ratio he has said all along should achieve a top two finish.

The 48 hours that followed suggested he is right.

Certainly, his calm is a big asset for Sunderland.

They are, in his own words, not an outstanding side.

But they are a good one, and when they return from a fortnight break they are still in a good position to achieve all of their goals.