We sit in 7th place in the Championship, gaining ground on the playoffs and looking good to secure a spot come May, but do we really want promotion. With a squad only just coming together, an inexperienced manager yet to make his full mark on the club could we actually hack it in the top flight?
It's an awkward question. At the start of the season any manager in any league should be stating his aim is to win the title, why settle for anything less? Aidy Boothroyd said it with Watford and was laughed off TV, but why? Surely any manager aims to win every match, therefore winning the title. This is where I enter a state of confusion. I want my team to win every match, I want promotion for the club but I still don't find myself 100% confident that we could avoid relegation again.
The squad we have at the minute is not Premiership class, it still needs some work, we need to build as a team. Granted, Keano and Quinn pulled off a great coup with Stokes and that may hint of the pulling power Sunderland have, if we achieve promotion we could have the status and the money to attract big players, but there are a lot of ifs and buts.
I really don't want another season in the Championship. When I look down the fixture list I don't want to see Colchester or Southend, I want to see The Scum and ManYoo. But at the same time I don't want another season where we become a laughing stock again achieving less that twenty points, if we gain promotion I would want to see some top signings in the summer and a relatively safe mid-table position.
It is a wondering of mine that I have shared with many fans: some optimistic, others not so. I like to think of myself as a realist, but deep down, everyone hopes for the best. Perhaps we could have another promotion that leads to a 7th place finish again, we could have a top goal scorer in Stokes and he could become our new SuperKev. Who knows, in a few years we could be challenging for a Uefa Cup spot…or is that me being pessimistic!
It is a question that only time can tell, and I'm sure that the answer will unfold in the normal, completely non-dramatic manner in which Sunderland normally achieve things, lets just hope we don't finish 3rd in the playoffs again!
Michael Grady
FTM.