Both Sunderland and Cardiff will be confident of a win

By Carl Curtis

Make or break, do or die, must win, all these phrases have been used over the past few weeks when it concerns Cardiff City’s recent fixtures but surely Cardiff City’s survival or relegation really does hinge on tomorrow’s game at Sunderland. I cannot see how City could possibly stay up unless they win at the Stadium of Light.

Sunderland will be encouraged by their previous two results, both excellent and unexpected points gained away to Man City and Chelsea and the belief in their camp, of pulling themselves out of the relegation dog fight, must be sky high.

Cardiff City’s squad should be optimistic too, a superb win away Southampton and a point gained, in my opinion, at home to an in-form Stoke City has kept us in a survival battle that many thought would have been over at this stage of the season.

If the Bluebirds come away from the North East with all three points tomorrow then I believe that we will be able to get the other three points that will probably be needed to ensure we play top flight football again next season.

Should we fail to get all three points at Sunderland then Cardiff City will be relegated this season but it will have been our results at home that will have been the key to our demise from the Premier League, losses at home to teams such as Crystal Palace, Hull and West Ham have been where we have let ourselves down, both performance wise and obviously result.

Away from home City have managed to gain ten points which I believe is a decent haul for a newly promoted side but had we got eight wins at home to date then we would be safe already with three games to spare.

We have managed just five wins at home and with the five home draws we have got then another three wins would have us on 39 points with 9 points still to play for.

What has happened is in the past and cannot be changed but somehow Cardiff City have an opportunity to pull the cat out of the bag and go a huge step to pulling off a memorable great escape.

Many Pundits believe that off-field activities and distractions have not helped our cause and have in fact hampered our chances, that is probably true to a certain degree but the players must put everything behind them and concentrate only on the task in hand, they got a lifeline and I am sure they will take it with both hands.

I am confident we can pull off a result tomorrow and we will live to fight another day, I hope so for a number of reasons but one will be that we can enjoy the long journey home and look forward to heading back up the North East again in six days’ time to play Newcastle.

Discuss this article here http://www.cardiffcityforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=140373