I watched Wilson Isidor miss a sitter vs Norwich - but Sunderland fans shouldn't be too worried by his form

If anything, he had too much time.

As Wilson Isidor picked the pocket of his unsuspecting centre-back and streaked away across the vast expanse of Norwich City’s uninhabited half, epochs seemed to pass - civilisations collapsed; stars imploded; redwoods sprouted, grew to towering heights, were felled, and sprouted again. For an agonising age, nobody could catch him - because nobody ever can - and by the time he reached Angus Gunn’s box, it was almost as if the Sunderland striker had spent so long in transit that even he had forgotten what was supposed to come next.

Eventually, a shot was blazed over the bar, an expectant home crowd groaned in unified disdain, and Isidor’s bothersome goal drought dragged on for at least a little while longer. It is now seven games without a strike for the Frenchman, and with each passing blank, you get the niggling feeling that the weight of that unwelcome record rests a tad heavier on his shoulders.

Why exactly things aren’t landing for Isidor at the present moment in time is hard to deduce. Certainly, they were coming off earlier in the season; his spurned breakaway against Norwich was more than a touch reminiscent of a similarly single-minded gallop against Hull City that culminated in a deftly-executed dink beyond a sprawling goalkeeper rather than a wayward howitzer that threatened to disrupt the flight paths of passing seabirds.

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Perhaps it is a confidence thing, although you can’t imagine that a player of Isidor’s irrepressible, infectious demeanour suffers from the jitters all that often. Perhaps it is just an unusually prolonged spell of concentrated misfortune. At the very least, some of the bemusing incidents in which the 24-year-old has failed to find the back of the net since his first half strike against Coventry City on November 9th would lend themselves to that latter hypothesis.

Either way, Regis Le Bris doesn’t seem overly worried. In a press conference following Sunderland’s 2-1 win over Norwich last weekend, the head coach said: "He's really close to scoring again, he didn't score today but I know it will happen very soon. He's still very involved in many phases and is very useful for the team. Now it's a question of clinical efficiency.

"These periods for strikers are not unusual. You have to manage it properly. He still has his confidence. The dressing room understands what happens with strikers, that sometimes they can't have the clinical efficiency they would like to have. But he's still connected with his teammates and it's just a question of time."

And as is so often the case, Le Bris’ measured response to Isidor’s struggles is both sobering and entirely fair. Since his last goal-scoring turn, against Coventry, the centre forward has taken 16 shots without finding the back of the net. Some would argue that figure is a perfect illustration of a concerning wastefulness. Others - Le Bris evidently amongst them - would see it as proof that Isidor is still working his way into dangerous positions, and that sooner or later, those shots are going to start finding their way past goalkeepers once more.

It is a well-worn cliche of footballing discourse that the real time to worry is not when you are missing chances, but when you are not being presented with chances in the first place. That may sound tired and rote, but sometimes cliches are cliches for a reason. If Isidor continues to play in the way that he has been over the course of his ongoing lean spell, he will come good again. The law averages dictates that he simply has to.

And as Le Bris has pointed out, in the meantime, he continues to bring those around him into the game effectively, continues to pester stretch defensive lines with his proactive running, and generally speaking, continues to look like a bit of nuisance.

None of this is to say that Isidor’s dry patch is ideal, or that Sunderland shouldn’t still consider the prospect of attacking reinforcements during the January transfer window. But at the very least, it should serve as a reminder that for all of his recent misfires, there is no need to be ringing the alarm bells about the Frenchman’s form just yet.