A Year on The Wear: The story so far. By 6pm tomorrow Sunderland's Premier League season will have passed the quarter mark, writes Michael Walker.
Coupled with another international break, this is a moment when stocktaking has felt natural. The statistics are a reasonable starting point and they reveal Sunderland have played nine matches, won two, drawn two and lost five. Ten goals have been scored in those games and 16 conceded. That has given Sunderland eight points and 17th place in the table.
Project this across a 38-game season and Sunderland would get approximately 33-34 points. That sounds an ominously low total, but in 2005 West Brom stayed up with 34 points. Not that Sunderland are aiming for the minimum requirement, though Roy Keane talked yesterday morning of a "long, hard season ahead" for all of the sides in the bottom half of the table now.
Keane was taking little solace, at least publicly, from the current top two, Arsenal and Manchester United, having been visited. Both games have been lost but the improvement from losing 1-0 at Old Trafford on September 1st to losing 3-2 at Ashburton Grove on October 7th was noted by everyone. Also good in terms of getting certain fixtures out of your system is that Liverpool have been to the Stadium of Light as have Blackburn Rovers.
That means four of the current top six have been faced and while none of those games has yielded a point for Sunderland, the reality is their first season back in the Premier League as a new entity under Keane-Quinn-Drumaville is probably about the bottom six, possibly the bottom half.
Of those, Sunderland have played Tottenham and Reading at home and beaten them and seized a point at Birmingham and Middlesbrough. There has also been a defeat at Wigan. Nyron Nosworthy described Sunderland's performance that day as "lazy" but the displays at Old Trafford and Arsenal have lifted belief. Nosworthy believes "we can beat the teams around us". West Ham, two points but five places ahead of Sunderland, are one of those who must be considered "around us" if Wearside's season is to prosper. As Keane warned though: "The West Ham game isn't going to be easy because they're not in the top four. They're all difficult games.
"It has been a difficult start, no doubt, playing United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham, and then teams we'd certainly have to compete against like Birmingham, Wigan, Middlesbrough. It's been a difficult start but it doesn't mean it will be easier when we play those teams at home."
Keane was generous with praise, as he is often, on this occasion for Alan Curbishley. The West Ham manager's longevity of experience, Keane said, meant mistakes Keane has made this season would not have been replicated by Curbishley. Yet for all his years in management Curbishley is as relatively new to his club as Keane is and both men are trying to run while recruiting and moulding a team, then simultaneously seeing those efforts hampered by injuries.
For Keane, the loss of captain Dean Whitehead and winger/release valve Carlos Edwards has been a major hindrance. Not that he is different from any manager in that respect, or that he was looking for it as an explanation of form or results. Keane, in fact, was being mildly self-critical yesterday and there appears to have been a recognition on his part that in terms of buying policy there has to be a change.
"In the next few years at Sunderland we'll certainly look to Europe a lot more," he said. "Maybe that's where the better deals are to be had. A lot of managers have certainly gone down that road, experienced managers. Some of them have been criticised for it but I think it's a road Sunderland certainly have to look at.
"That's where the lack of experience would have come in. We wanted to buy players we knew more about. We've no problem spending money and competing with other teams, like we have with our goalkeeper and stuff like that, but Europe is certainly an area we need to cover more. I wouldn't say we ignored it; we did discuss it. I've got other staff members and we discussed the players around. We just felt we needed a certain type of player we knew more about; it was as simple as that."
Mick Brown, the chief scout recruited from Manchester United, has been travelling extensively, watching Champions League games, and Brown has also been charged with building an infrastructure. When Keane arrived Sunderland had no European scout. Or network. It is one of those details, like the players having ice baths in wheelie bins, that reminds you of where the club was pre-Quinn. Chairman Niall spoke this week of fresh funds being available, so all of Brown's travel is not in vain - "The Drumaville people have put in a sizeable amount of money, in excess of what they paid for the club, and there's more to come" - and as Keane and Quinn have both said, this coming window is the first where they have had the necessary time to plan.
That said, Keane stressed "that doesn't make it any easier" in getting clubs to release good players. There is also the fact players outside the club will be taking stock of where Sunderland are at Christmas.
Another 10 points, at least, are needed by then to cement the sense of a progressive club. That means nicking points at places like Upton Park, then looking forward to the visit of Fulham to Wearside next Saturday. Derby and Bolton also come before January opens and the mere awareness of that shows where Sunderland are on October 20th 2007. To some it might look shaky but it beats last year: then they were 17th in a division below awaiting the visit of Barnsley.
