Alex Neil has admitted that he needs to prioritize “substance over style” in the League One run-in as Sunderland work to book a play-off place. The Black Cats are involved in a difficult battle with at least five other teams to secure one of the four play-off sheets.
And with only eight players left, they have limited time to get the points they need to secure the top six finish. Head coach Neil took charge almost a month ago and during that time he asked players to take his tactical approach and as many of his ideas as they could.
More fundamental changes in the style of play will have to wait until the summer, when he will have more time to work with the players in the pre-season, and when the transfer window will have the opportunity to reshape the squad. Until then, though, it’s easy to find a way to get the points that keep Sunderland with a chance at promotion.
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“I think for sure we need to be more substance over style at the moment,” Neil said. “The result is the most important thing.
“That does not mean we want to be poor in our game, we want a level that is acceptable and to build on and improve it, but the simple fact is that we remain eight players and we have to collect as many points as we can. .If it means to be a little more pragmatic in terms of points, then I have to do it.
“Points are more important than anything else at the moment. We’re just trying to find a way to win games, and fortunately we’re on our way to doing that.
“We’ve been doing that for the last few weeks, and we have to keep going.”
Sunderland produced impressive performances on the road to win 3-0 at promotion-level Wigan, and at Charlton Athletic in a goalless game that dominated the Black Cats and should have won. At home, the displays were less convincing last week against Fleetwood Town and then Crewe Alexandra, but Sunderland have collected six points from those games that Neil knows are the most important.
He said: “The two home games we’ve had at the latest, we can certainly perform better than that. The two away games, at Wigan and Charlton, I thought we did extremely well.
“You could possibly argue that it was a bit mixed in terms of performances, but we had the points that were important and we also kept it clean, we still scored goals.”
Sunderland have maintained three clean sheets in their last four games, and are on a five-game unbeaten run as they prepare to head to Lincoln City tomorrow.
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