Sunderland were a club that went into the January transfer deadline day with a lot of deals still to be done. Josh Maja left the club for Bordeaux just less than a week before the deadline, leaving the Mackems with some recruitment to do before the Thursday 11pm deadline, and the fans were certainly not left disappointed.
Jack Ross did a sublime job on deadline day. The ex-St Mirren man brought in a number of players, including the likes of Will Grigg from Wigan, Tottenham youngster Kazaiah Sterling and a man who he knows very well from his last job in Scotland, Lewis Morgan. Between the three of them, replacing the goals of Maja should be easy enough and with a lot of the season left, promotion is on the cards.
Sunderland have a lot of catching up to do in League One, though. They’ve played just 27 games in the division this season, three less than Charlton and Luton and two less than Barnsley and Portsmouth who are the only four clubs above them at the moment. However, if they can win all of their games in hand by a combined margin of ten goals then they’ll usurp Luton Town at the top of English football’s 3rd tier.
That is certainly easier said than done, though, and with Jack Ross’ new lads needing time to get settled in before they can start finding their best form, it could be two or three games before they really start playing their best football. They’ll also have to avoid falling into the same trap that they have done so often this season in drawing games.
The Black Cats have only lost twice this season and they’ve both come in tough away matches, once at Portsmouth and once at Burton Albion. However, they’ve drawn 11 games out of their 27, with a number of those being more than winnable fixtures. If the fans want to be celebrating promotion in the Northeast then they’ll desperately need to learn how to put games to bed, and with their new strikers on hand and ready, that will be what Ross will be working on.
