Although just one point and one place separate their teams in the lower reaches of the Premier League, supporters of Sunderland and Leicester City will be approaching Saturday’s crunch encounter at the Stadium of Light with widely differing views on how their respective seasons have gone.
Although unwelcome, inquiries about the origins of “the amount of negativity and criticism” Nigel Pearson’s players have “been forced to endure over the course of the season” are valid, so we can only surmise the siege mentality fostered by Leicester’s manager has contributed to a streak of six wins from seven matches that has catapulted them from rock bottom to the comparatively dizzy heights of 16th place and widely predicted survival.
Before their victory against West Ham six weeks ago, Leicester were seven points adrift of safety. A point from games against Sunderland and Queens Park Rangers ought to guarantee their top-flight presence for another season and may not even be required.
Sunderland, having pulled off an even more unlikely escape last season, find themselves down among the dead and dying once again. With six matches of the season to go, Dick Advocaat told his players that six more points would suffice. They have since acquired seven yet remain in peril. Defeat against Leicester could render their game in hand against Arsenal at the Emirates a curse rather than a blessing, as a team capable of losing 8-0 at Southampton are capable of anything. In a tight race to avoid the drop that could yet be decided by goal difference, it may prove the first Get out of Jail card in history to send its bearer down.
After taking four seasons to consolidate their position in the Premier League after promotion in 2007, Sunderland have steadily regressed since 2011, lurching from crisis to crisis and shedding four managers while hanging around the lower reaches of the table like uninvited and empty-handed gatecrashers skulking in the kitchen at a party. Which is not to say they have not entertained: last year’s Capital One Cup final appearance was a particular highlight, not least when it emerged they had fielded an ineligible player en route to Wembley, while the appointment of a manager with famously pro-fascist and anti-ketchup leanings in Paolo Di Canio proved predictably unwise.
More recently the moribund tactics indoctrinated by Gus Poyet have been replaced by the more expansive tactical views espoused by Advocaat. More pleasant on the eye for Sunderland’s unwaveringly loyal supporters, it has not yet proved a great deal more effective. A mixture of blind luck and heroically obdurate defending helped the Dutchman mastermind victory over Everton last weekend, to leave his team on the relegation threshold with daunting trips to the Emirates and Stamford Bridge to come. Defeat at the Stadium of Light could spell disaster.
Leicester have had problems too, apparently dismissing their own volatile manager only quickly to reappoint him. In a sport where silver linings often come accompanied by a cloud, their latest setback comes in the wake of last weekend’s win over Southampton, with scans revealing that the midfielder Matty James has torn an anterior cruciate ligament and will undergo treatment that will almost certainly keep him sidelined until the new year.
“It’s not great news for him but hopefully it’ll be a straightforward operation,” said Pearson. “It’ll be based on whatever needs to be done.” Proceedings at the Stadium of Light are also likely to be dictated by whatever needs to be done, although requirements may change depending on events as they unfold elsewhere.
This time six years ago, Hull City, Newcastle and Sunderland occupied the same Premier League positions as they do today. Should history repeat itself, Sunderland’s fans will end another season of underachievement on a massive high, as they wave their north-east rivals Newcastle goodbye.
