Phil Smith: My honest view on the atmosphere at Sunderland games and the big away fan debate

A longstanding Sunderland debate was reignited last week when club bosses opened dialogue with the supporter collective about moving away fans back down into the lower bowl at the Stadium of Light.

Bosses expressed a concern that the team were no longer gaining an edge from the home atmosphere, despite the generally very positive results this season. Perhaps the best question to start with here isn’t whether the move would help to improve the atmosphere at games, because it undoubtedly would. The extra noise created by travelling fans and more specifically the natural to and fro with the home fans nearby would inevitably lift the noise over the course of games.

The better question might be whether it would improve the atmosphere enough to warrant the significant disruption the change would mean for a not insignificant number of home fans who would have to move seats to facilitate the decision.

Longstanding matchday routines and traditions, as well as friendships built up over years of watching games together would inevitably be disrupted and that’s not something to be taken lightly.

The key factors that could impacting the atmosphere at the Stadium of Light

The starting point for assessing how to improve the atmosphere would have to start by working out what the root cause of the ‘dip’ is.

That the Stadium of Light can still produce one of the best atmospheres around is beyond question. The home legs of the club’s last two play-off campaigns have produced a din every inch as good as anything the ground has seen in its relatively brief but rich history. Even this season there have been moments when the ground has vibrated like it did in those heady early days, Quinn & Phillips v Chelsea etc. Chris Rigg’s audacious backheel against Middlesbrough, the first-half demolition of Sheffield Wednesday… this is still a ground where the opposition can struggle to keep their footing at times.

It probably tells us something that you can add Romaine Mundle’s equaliser against Preston North End to that list. After the game, both camps noted that the fury in the Stadium of Light as Preston took an age of a string of substitutions helped bring the crowd into the game and life into an otherwise mediocre Sunderland performance. The point being: how often this season have we seen a game that has genuinely had us on the edge of our seats? Sheffield United’s visit was an excellent, high-stakes game and had an atmosphere to match.

That’s not a criticism of Sunderland, to be clear. This has been for the most part a vibrant young team to watch and to have secured a play-off place so far out from the end of the regular campaign is an achievement to savour. It’s just that for a while now, results at home have probably been better than the quality of game.

This is only in part due to Sunderland, who it has to be said have not for a while been able to execute the high press, high intensity game which is said to be the bedrock of the club’s playing identity. First and foremost, though, that’s because of the growing respect with which opposition teams are treating them. Visiting sides increasingly give them little to press in the way Sheffield Wednesday did, and slow the game down at every opportunity. It’s not easy to generate an authentic atmosphere in stop-start games where the officials are seemingly incapable of managing the various stoppages, genuine or otherwise. There was a noble if flawed attempt to fix timewasting a couple of years back as the EFL followed the example of FIFA in adding proper amounts of stoppage time, but that has been quietly dumped as we return to the standard two and three minutes all round.

This is not a purely Sunderland issue, here, and that’s an important point to make. Reflecting back on the season as a whole, there are only really a handful of particularly memorable atmospheres you can recall. Elland Road towards the end and Plymouth Argyle’s Home Park, for sure. Generally, though, you strongly suspect that most clubs are weighing up a similar dilemma.

The technical and tactical quality of the second tier has gone through the roof since Sunderland’s last stint at the level and it's hard to imagine a game of the quality that defined the 3-2 win at Middlesbrough, for example, happening a decade ago. It’s just that most games don’t really look like that. Take Sunderland’s trip to West Brom just a few weeks ago, for example. That was a huge game for West Brom, with everything on the line. The atmosphere was good, but not great. Why? Probably because having taken the lead, Sunderland did exactly what so many teams have done to them. They sat in, frustrated, and took time out of the game. Most of the contest was played with the ball at the foot of a West Brom defender, hardly conducive to a raucous atmosphere.

Managing such a small squad amid such a punishing schedule is a very difficult task, and makes consistently playing at a level of ferocious intensity very difficult for Sunderland. Beyond the simple result, though, they could be doing more to quicken up the play and get the home crowd involved. To say they could do with some help from the officials (and most teams in the top half would probably say this) is an understatement.

So what do Sunderland need to do to improve Stadium of Light atmosphere?

When the second leg of Sunderland’s play-off semi final kicks off, the atmosphere will be exceptional. Of that there is little doubt and that tells you that there is no fundamental problem. The question is how to replicate that for every game when the stakes are not quite so high.

Is moving the away fans part of that puzzle? If it can be done sensitively and with minimum disruption for home fans, it most definitely is. The work will have to go beyond that, though. Improving the offering both at the Stadium of Light and in the surrounding areas (work that is very much under way, in fairness) to encourage fans to break their understandable habit of arriving shortly before kick off would help.

The club have also discussed creating an atmosphere group and that will be an important step in trying to build that culture of finding ways to boost the noise and colour around games. The sense of occasion and atmosphere around those recent play-off games have been enhanced by the fan-led displays before them, most definitely contributing in their own small way to the positive results. Mostly, though, it’s about what happens on the pitch.

Exploring the return of away fans to the lower bowl is definitely a step in the right direction, but it certainly is not the answer by itself.

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