A more attacking outlook today?

[Mister Chops 7]

From latest Pink Un article.  Unless Chris Hughton is playing mind games, but it''s hardly as if Sunderland would play six at the back to cope with our ravenous forward line...

“I think

defensively we have been excellent,” said Hughton. “Yes, I would like to

be scoring more goals and we have tried to address that of late. We

have had a lot of clean sheets, along with a few games where we have let

in goals, so at times we haven’t married up so well together.

“What

we also have to do is try and give ourselves an opportunity to win

these nine games because there is a big difference between drawing and

winning games.”

“You don’t want anybody accepting where we are at the moment,” he

said. “You want them to strive for better in the table. We do have a

nine point gap (to the bottom three) and the attitude has to be can we

extend that? In some ways you don’t want too much of the pressure off

them because you want that balance. Perhaps it might be that individual

players respond differently, but generally you want some pressure. We

have nine games to go and I would like to think we will fight as hard in

the last game as we will on Sunday.

[Salopian 1]

Not a chance:

- our philosphy is to avoide defeat if we can''t win.

- currently we are creating little and scoring nothing - the only hope is to work hard for a point, which would be no mean achievement.

- CH is by nature cautious, and not keen to experiment.

[Mister Chops 7]

Wouldn''t say we were cautious today even with ten men, would you?

[Bury Yellow 2]

I agree Chops. This was gutsy performance and before the sending off we looked by far the better side. Not what I was anticipating to be honest.

Throughout we were balanced and looked to be positive on the break, reminding me of Swansea away.

Credit where''s it due, the players looked as if they played for Hoots today together with a much more positive reaction from the media thankfully.

Post comments by Hoots and Martin were class and a credit to the club.

The loss of two points because of rank poor officials will take some time to wash from my mind however!

[ron obvious 1,499]

Wonderful team spirit all round. Howson had his best game for a while & Whittaker nearly ran through the oppo defence again! Wish we could find a way to include him without sacrificing Cafu!