Michael Beale has explained what his biggest ‘concern’ is after Sunderland lost to Birmingham City.
Sunderland massively overachieved in their first season in the Championship, narrowly missing out on the play-off final to Luton Town.
However, it now appears that they have only gone backwards. Since bringing Michael Beale in to replace Tony Mowbray in December, the Black Cats have won four out of their 12 matches and now sit tenth in the league table.
The defeat to Birmingham was their second in a row and now leaves them four points from sixth place.
It comes as no surprise that many supporters are now doubting that they can reach the play-offs this term, while even Michael Beale has admitted it will be very ‘difficult’.
The Sunderland manager has identified what his biggest ‘concern’ is going into the final months of the campaign.
Speaking to Sunderland Echo, he said: “We’re going to have to improve.
“We’ve got some big away games. I think what we can deal with right now, is pick the bones out of this one and make sure that we get a positive performance and result next week at home to Swansea. Without improving our away form, you’d have to say it’s going to be difficult. What I will say, is there’s a hell of a lot of football to play, at some stage we’re going to have to go on a run.
“We’ve been used to that in the last couple of seasons, making a late surge for it. We’re certainly not giving up on anything with the games we’ve got to go. Our away form all season has been a concern.”
How bad is our away form?
There is no doubting that our away form is a huge issue right now, having won only one of our last 12 games on the road. They have also only scored five away goals in Beale’s six games in charge.
If you then look at our home form, we have won 10 of the 16 games at the Stadium of Light – not drawing a single one. We have also netted 26 goals in that time.
It’s baffling considering we have spent large chunks of our very recent past looking very poor at home, and now it seems to have swapped around.
It’s hard to pinpoint what the problem is, but it is something that desperately needs addressing. We have visits to Norwich, Southampton, Cardiff, Leeds United, West Brom and Watford still to come – an incredibly depressing fixture list for us right now.