Easter can be make or break time for clubs fighting for prizes at the top end of the table. Two Bank Holiday wins can lay the groundwork for an automatic promotion or set up a play-off place, while two defeats can reduce a season's hard work to rubble.
On balance, then, Sunderland's four points gained over the Easter weekend lies towards the positive end of the scale. The Good Friday home win against Shrewsbury was the perfect start, and the Easter Monday goalless stalemate at play-off rivals Plymouth returned a solid point which extended the Black Cats' unbeaten run to ten games.
It means Sunderland will go into the final Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday of the season well-placed, with their play-off fate still in their own hands, which is about as much as they can ask for at this stage. The reality is that Wigan, Rotherham, and MK Dons, will account for the two automatic promotion places and one of the play-off places.
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That leaves Sunderland, Plymouth, Wycombe, Sheffield Wednesday and - as rank outsiders - Oxford, fighting it out for the remaining three play-off spots. Every one of those sides still has at least one, and in some cases two, game against other members of that group.
In addition, games in hand also give Sunderland and Sheffield Wednesday a potential extra advantage. It is beautifully poised for those on the outside looking in, but nerve-shredding for those involved in the battle.
Sunderland had a chance to take a firmer grip on matters on Monday, but could only draw a blank against the Pilgrims. Alex Neil admitted his side had lacked its usual quality in the final third, and there could be no argument about that.
Against Shrewsbury, they scored three against a side that had not conceded three goals in a league game since August; at Plymouth, they became the seventh visiting side in a row to depart Home Park without scoring. It was a game of few clear-cut chances, with Plymouth shading the first half and Sunderland controlling the second.
At times it was frantic stuff - the polar opposite of a cagey goalless draw between two sides sitting back, afraid to take any risks. So the fact that the sides managed only three shots on target between them - two of which came from Sunderland - throughout the 90 minutes said more about the standard of the finishing and the defending, than of any lack of ambition.
Each side created one good chance, with Niall Ennis denied by Anthony Patterson in the first half, and Michael Cooper saving with his legs from Nathan Broadhead in the the second. It was an eighth game in a row without a goal for leading scorer Ross Stewart, his longest drought of the season, and he looks to be feeling the effects of a long season in which he has started every one of the club's 43 league games.
Neil acknowledged that Stewart had been 'flogged to death' and he would have liked to have freshened up his forward line with substitutes, but that he had no-one else to call upon. That squad deficiency was glaringly obvious in January and much commented on at the time, yet it went unaddressed and the effects are now being seen.
All Sunderland can do is hope that it does not cost them in the final reckoning.
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