’Til death I do part with my team

WHEN a childhood pal decides to get married in the middle of the football season it raises several dilemmas. Do I choose friends or football?

Spend a hundred pounds on a trip to Portsmouth or an espresso machine?

In the end, as I set off for Fratton Park at 6am with bleary eyes, it seemed a fairly easy choice.

I’ve been watching Sunderland since I was two years old; I’d only known the groom since I was 10. I chose to make a 672-mile round trip to watch 11 strangers rather than enjoy drinks with old school mates.

The plus side is I witnessed a ten out of ten performance from the lads.

Not in terms of their display, but the 1-0 loss now puts our consecutive run of away losses into double figures.

Whilst it wasn’t a bad weekend in terms of other teams below us losing, it makes Saturday’s trip to Derby look far more important than an easy away day against an appallingly poor team.

Paul Jewell’s men look very capable of smashing our record low points total of 15. Since they’re stuck on nine points, having won only one game all season, anything less than victory this weekend will be a travesty.

Our main fault on the road has been not attacking, so we need to go for a win at Pride Park.

Keane needs to ditch the 4-5-1 formation away from home. Of our central midfield at Fratton Park, there wasn’t anybody of the pace and quality of, say, Kieran Richardson, to support Kenwyne Jones on his own up front.

As a result it means we play long balls to Jones in the hope he can win a free kick, penalty or even a throw-in that we might be able to create something from. It’s frustrating for him and exasperating for us. Surely Keane, who witnessed how football should be played at Manchester United, can see this.

Thankfully our home form has been good enough to keep us out of trouble in recent weeks, with four consecutive victories at the Stadium of Light.

We’ve won more home games in the Premier League than Liverpool this season. Having visited bottom half rivals Reading and Wigan and come away with nothing, a couple of wins in those matches would have seen us comfortably in 11th ahead of Tottenham instead of struggling to keep our heads above the water.

As it is, most clubs below us look like self-imploding and saving us.

Despite good initial runs of form under new managers for Wigan, Birmingham and Bolton, they have all settled back down and are looking far more likely to threaten the trap door than we are.

Derby are now dead and buried. If you don’t believe me, ask their manager.

Fulham are hanging on but it’ll take title-winning form in the next few weeks to get them anywhere near out of it. Reading have dropped into freefall and, save for a last ditch free kick against Aston Villa on Sunday, hadn’t scored a goal in nine hours of play.

Birmingham have been stuck on fourth bottom for some time and despite my namesake’s goals for them, and an undeserved point against Arsenal, their mini-renaissance under Alex McLeish looks over.

Whilst Newcastle look realistically safe, nobody on Wearside will admit it, and so I have to add Kevin Keegan’s Entertainers into the relegation mix-up. Under the Messiah they have played six, won none, scored three and conceded 16. I suspect the only people being entertained by that record are Sunderland fans.

Having broken several land-speed records on Saturday night to attend the wedding reception (you’ve got to make an effort) I arrived to see several happy faces, albeit mainly alcohol-induced. Maybe Saturday’s trip to Portsmouth wasn’t the best option after all until I remembered one last little thing. You can change your wife but you can’t change your football team.

* Martyn McFadden