Wise Men Say: Coventry City should hold no fear for Sunderland despite totally unacceptable run of form

After spending weeks floating through a sea of FA Cup matches, leasing.com Trophy games and yet another international break, Sunderland can finally drop anchor into the League One slog and get stuck right back in.

A lot has been said already about Tuesday’s ‘football match’ at the Priestfield Stadium.

In which Sunderland managed to negotiate 120 minutes of an FA Cup First Round Replay away at Gillingham, without so much as one shot on target. Now that’s a sentence I’d never imagined having to write.

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Now that the dust has settled, the hands have been wrung and the players have (hopefully) been made suitably aware of how totally unacceptable this recent run has been, we now need to focus fully on Saturday’s game.

The notion of a must-win game in November is maybe a little fanciful, but the accumulation of games in hand and our league position mean that a home game against a team above us in the table really, really needs to be won.

Coventry have yet to win away from home in the league, which pessimists will tell you makes it all the more likely that Saturday will be their first. I, on the other hand, view this as an eminently winnable home game.

Coventry may be above us in the league, but looking at their vital statistics shows very little for us to be worried about. In brief, away from home they concede a lot of goals (1.71 per game on average) and don’t score that many either (1.14 per game). They are in the midst, however, of an upturn in fortunes which has rendered them unbeaten in seven games in all competitions.

Virtually every home win we’ve had has been built upon a fast start and early goal. This game needs to be no exception.

We need to keep the ball on the floor, move it quickly and get the triangles going. We need to shoot early and often and keep pushing forward. As we know, this side do not really do sitting back well.

There’s my advice anyway, Parky. Do with it what you will.

If Sunderland do get the win we so desperately need it’ll still be far too early to say we’re on our way back. But it’ll be a start. A start back towards the redemption of this chronically underperforming side. Then, maybe, we can start looking upwards again.