Phil Smith: Sunderland's season so far in review - highs, lows and key lessons to take forward

Spring is sprung (well, sort of) and yet when it comes to football and Wearside, there is for once little tension in the air.

The most optimistic will still harbour hopes of a surge towards the top six but the odds are, to put it mildly, against Tony Mowbray’s side. Though the extent of the damage is not yet fully known, watching Dan Ballard limp out of Northern Ireland duty with a muscle problem just underlined that feeling which has steadily grown over the last month or so: Not this time.

And so for the first time in a decade, Sunderland head into the last stage of the season looking neither over their shoulder or up towards the top.

That is in itself a success, of sorts. A year ago, Sunderland came into this international break after a trip to Lincoln City. You may not remember too much about the game itself - it finished 0-0. Which is not to say that it was insignificant.

It may not have felt particularly uplifting or encouraging at the time but in retrospect you begin to see how Alex Neil was fixing the soft underbelly of that side, and what leaps to the mind without even watching the highlights back was how for the first time, Patrick Roberts looked like the winger we have come to relish watching.

He, like his side, have travelled an extraordinarily long way in twelve months.

At times, you have had to pinch yourself. Never more so than that bizarrely balmy early afternoon in January, when Sunderland travelled to Premier League opposition and came away unscathed. And did so not by defending their box but by going toe-to-toe with their opposition, an end-to-end brawl that had neutrals purring about Sunderland’s revival.

There were some sobering elements to that contest, particularly over the course of the two legs. Fulham named a strong team but found a different level when Aleksandar Mitrovic was introduced, and there was no better performer than the outstanding Tom Cairney in midfield. That Cairney has struggled for regular starts in the league was a reminder of the gulf Sunderland are trying to bridge.

The Championship was once known as the most unpredictable, competitive league around. That isn’t true anymore and hasn’t been for some time - parachute payments if deployed sensibly create an inbuilt advantage that few are able to overcome for a sustained period. It was Fulham last year, Burnley this. There will most likely be another next.

Sunderland’s biggest success this season has been that they have proven both to themselves and everyone else that they can compete with these teams on their day, and by playing on the front foot.

The talk of building a dynamic, front-foot team has proved not to be an empty promise and indeed progressed rapidly over the last six to eight months. Roberts and Amad have at times been mesmeric when dovetailing on the right flank, and the quality of some team goals meant talk of a Puskas award did not at one stage even seem that outlandish.

That in itself spoke to an improving structure and decision-making progress: contrast the protracted hiring of Neil to the arrival of Mowbray, a decision that quickly stabilised the club in a potentially acrimonious period while still aligning closely with its long-term goals.

The challenge for Sunderland moving into the next twelve months is that top level of performance week in, week out. The other significance of that drab day at Lincoln City was that it proved to be Jermain Defoe’s last as a professional footballer, his emotional return to Sunderland ending without a goal and leaving Sunderland without any back-up to Ross Stewart.

That time they were able to get away with it; this time they were not.

At Fulham the striker would suffer his second significant injury of the season and though Mowbray’s side would defy footballing logic for a while, eventually the reality of playing without a natural and proven number nine would catch up with them.

The sense of a lesson not learned or perhaps not heeded, three windows in a row, is why for many the richly-deserved praise for Sunderland’s recruitment overhaul comes with a touch of concern.

As had happened when he and Ellis Simms suffered injury earlier in the season, Stewart’s absence made Sunderland easier to play against and particularly on home turf. Their record at the Stadium of Light has been poor because too often teams have been able to sit off, frustrate, and wait for their moment to break.

This has been the contradiction of Sunderland’s season: It has been mostly fun apart from the moments when it has been bitterly frustrating. And that has been OK, this time around.

The scale of the rebuild required when Kyril Louis-Dreyfus assumed control of the club was obvious, and the gulf financially to the teams now cementing their place in the promotion picture this season clear. For Sunderland to compete, impress, entertain and fall a little short?

Not so hard to stomach, not at the end of four years in the League One wilderness. Perhaps most pleasing is that the team has shown a real spirit and willingness to dig deep, which speaks to a recruitment model that can identify that can identify good characters as well as good technicians. Something to relish, and to protect.

That contradiction again: the same thing that has made Sunderland successful has also been the root of their recent issues. The focus on investing in youth has been the spark of all that wonderful football, and yet at the same time their lack of depth and variety has been the cause of their recent dip. Again, in this nascent stage of a long-term project, there is a sense to that.

Louis-Dreyfus spoke ahead of January about moving from the initial phase of the project, packing the squad with young talent that can grow, to being more limited and specific in addressing specific areas of the squad.

Though the luck with injuries has been rotten, it’s hard to argue that happened last time around. It’s why the summer window feels like a significant one, a chance to show that this project is indeed moving into the next phase.

It has to date been a season that has shown how far Sunderland have come, and how far they still have to go. Though the investment in the footballing infrastructure has yielded clear results, other aspects of the off-pitch operation remain a long way from where they could be when it comes to a club of this size and potential.

Though recent news of Stewart Donald’s stake being further reduced points to an ownership structure moving in the right direction, rebuilding trust is a long process and particularly when Juan Sartori, for so long such an enigma in Sunderland’s story, remains prominent even if this is very clearly a Louis-Dreyfus operation.

All of which is to say that this season is one in which Sunderland being back to where they should be has felt closer than it has for a long time, and yet the distance that remains has at times been equally obvious.

It will be fascinating to see how far along that journey Sunderland are next March, two more windows on.