David Preece: Sunderland supporters aren't enjoying their football - they're enduring it

It saves me time to avoid traffic if I’m running late or makes it quicker to get away if I want to get a flyer before the final whistle.

In any case, because my organisation is always left down to the wire (any of my editors can vouch for this), it wasn’t always possible for me to get a car parking spot.

Last Saturday though, I drove to the ground for about 2:30pm without any worry and parked in bay 46 in the Red Car Park right outside the main entrance.

Not that I am complaining but it just didn’t feel right.

It’s not like I’d organised myself any better this time, quite the opposite in fact. I was as Last Minute Larry as ever.

And like every other time, there was Andy on the door to the media room with the same friendly smile and welcome.

Andy’s one of the few people I know who call me “Davey”. Not that I mind at all. It’s just a nice little quirk that only happens when I go there and it’s one of the many things that signals to me I’m home.

As you walk in, you’re handed a lanyard with your credentials and the seat number you’re supposed to sit in the press box on them. As I discovered once I got up there though, the seat number was immaterial.

I had plenty of choice where to sit and the chance to stretch out if I wanted. Although I knew by then there would be. How?

Just prior to that, I’d walked into the media room and poured the first of my many coffees, making the same joke as I always do that the coffee is all I come for. In fairness, it is good coffee and even if it wasn’t, it always serves as a nice hand-warmer once you get up to the back of the stand.

Then I noticed was how sparse the place was.

Where the throng of cameras had once been erected on their tripods, all ready for post-match press interviews, there was nothing.

Where you once used to have to use the benches around the walls of the room and plonk yourself on a stool if you weren’t there before 2pm, I could have chosen to sit at any of the tables and have them all to myself.

Where you’d once have to spend most of the hour before kick-off catching up with the various familiar faces who arrived from anywhere and everywhere to cover the game, there was now one table with less than a handful of those forced to cover the game.

Smiles are a rarity. Nobody comes for the thrill now.

I depressed everyone further by talking about the situation at Östersunds and the only light relief comes by the way of a discussion about whose situation is worse.

And then there was the game.

Apart from two-well taken goals, the match as a whole brings little respite from the gloom.

Until George Dobson’s red card, the football was two-dimensional. The ball moved up, down and across the pitch in straight lines, and the players did the same. The game was crying out for something different but was never likely to as that bit of difference was probably sat at home.

There was so much space to be moved into by players willing to move off the vertical lines being played, making diagonal runs off the shoulder of their opponents. Instead, the best defenders became the players of the team in possession as they marked the player who was supposed to be marking them. Stalemate.

Blackpool were a side who found themselves in the play-off places but with all due respect, still a poor side. Both managers will have talked of an opposition who were there for the taking, yet neither team, it seemed, were willing to do any of the taking.

Yes, Matty Virtue-Thick’s strike was Virtue-lly unstoppable, but the defending in the lead-up to it was indecisive at best, from players lacking the confidence to take any responsibility to take control of the situation.

If you were looking at it from where I was, it was infuriating - Ozturk and Flanagan allowing a ball to bounce across them as the free-kick was delivered in to their vicinity and Laurens De Bock’s inadequate clearance all played an assist to the goal.

As it often did with Jordan Pickford in his final season here, it took another goalkeeper in Jon McLaughlin to be the one on the pitch looking to play and settle the rest of the team down to display some kind of pattern of play.

It helped a little. And Charlie Wyke can take some comfort from his goal, which wasn’t an easy finish.

It’s not easy to see something that isn’t there but the absence of confidence is as clear as day. When all that’s needed is a player to move a yard to his left to receive the ball but doesn’t, or a defender plays the ball back to the keeper to hit long even though that defender is in a better position to make a positive pass forward, it’s a sign.

For Sunderland it’s a sign of the times. Just like the open roads into the Stadium despite the “30,000” in attendance. Just like tumbleweeds blowing across the media room. Just like the dust and dead moths that had gathered on the seat where I sat.

Football isn’t something meant to be endured, it’s something to be enjoyed, but that’s what we’re all doing right now.

Happy Christmas? Don’t bet on it.