Sunderland Home Form is Key

Sunderland manager Roy Keane is looking for some fighting sprit to help lift his side out of the bottom three over the next few weeks.

He told the Sunderland Echo "There's been certain games this season where we should have got something from the game - West Ham away, Blackburn at home spring to mind and there's the Newcastle game especially"

"We're aware that these are those few extra points that we might have had which would have made a difference in the table"

"So that's why we keep saying every point is vital and why we have to fight to the last"

"Every point is vital because you never know what you're going to get and they have to keep on going to the end to see what you might get"

"You need character to do that, to keep on battling but our late goals have made the difference otherwise we could have been right at the bottom"

"Every season is different but Fulham stayed up last season and they won just eight games so we've got to remember that and fight for every draw and every win and stick in there when the going gets rough"

"Doing well at home to teams around us is naturally going to be important and with that being the case I don't mind if we have to wait until the last minute to get them - like we did against Derby County"

"We got a last minute winner against them last season which proved very important but we won't know until the end of this season if the win over Derby this time around also proved to be very important"

"What I do know is that is hard to get wins in this division. And coming up to Christmas it's important we get one or two more points on the board."

Editors Comment

Keane is right we need battle for every point we can get and our home games are going to be key starting this weekend against Villa.

I don`t really agree with him with regards to the points dropped giving us a better league position.

Yes we have missed out on some points we should have had but there are occasions this season when we have managed to get points we didn`t deserve. I like to think luck it evens itself up over the course of the season and at the moment the table doesn`t lie and were right in the brown stuff.

Keane desperately needs to strengthen in the transfer window and if we are going to have any chance of staying up he needs to start with the defence.

Looking at the table the 30 million spent in the summer has been wasted on a lot of expensive championship players.