Sunderland go into the final week of the season with their play-off fate in their own hands - and Alex Neil says he detects 'no fear' in his players as the campaign comes to a head. The play-off race is tight with - realistically, if not yet mathematically - five teams competing for three remaining places, assuming that Wigan, Rotherham, and MK Dons, have already done enough to account for the two automatic promotion spots and one of the play-off berths.
But Sunderland go into their last three games of the campaign knowing they will secure one of those places - and with it another crack at promotion - if they beat Cambridge at the Stadium of Light today, Rotherham at home on Tuesday, and win at Morecambe next Saturday. Neil has not spoken to the squad about the pressure they will be under in the final week, but says he will do so if he feels it would benefit them.
"It depends on what I feel the group needs," he said. "Intuition is a big thing in football.
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"I look at the group, where I think they are at collectively, and individually. Sometimes it might just be speaking to a couple of individuals, sometimes it might be addressing them as a group.
"I certainly haven't seen any nerves or fear from the team in any way, shape, or form, over the last month. The mindset has been really positive and focused.
"There was just the sloppy [20 minute] spell against Shrewsbury, but I think that was more complacency than fear. If I feel it necessary to address it, I will address it, but up to this point I don't see any issues on that."
Arriving at this stage of the season with their play-off fate in their own hands is all Neil could ask for given that the club had to all intents and purposes blown its chances of automatic promotion before he took over in mid-February. He inherited a side that had lost three games in a row, had conceded ten goals in the process, had won just one of its last seven matches, and that was sliding rapidly down the table after arriving at the turn of the year as league leaders.
But in his 12-games tenure, Sunderland have collected 22 points, have kept six clean sheets, and are now unbeaten in ten matches. He has also addressed imbalances in the squad in terms of fitness, which were holding the team back in January and February.
"I'm delighted with the progress," said Neil. "When I came in, if you look at the prevous matches, there had been three defeats on the bounce and the club had conceded ten goals in three games, some of the younger lads looked really, really fatigued, to say the least, and we had guys that we had signed in January who had played no football for the best part of 12 months.
"If you look now, we are in a much healthier state right across the board. We're unbeaten in ten games and we look as though we are capable of beating any team.
"So to go from the one place to where we are now, the lads deserve huge credit for what they have done. Even some of the games we have drawn, we played really well and deserved to win.
"If you look at the points tally that we have managed to accumulate, that in itself is very good. We're always going to be greedy and say 'we could have won here, or we could have won there' over the course of the season, but in the main the lads have delivered when we have needed them to and the games where we maybe didn't get what we deserved, it certainly wasn't down to a lack of effort - it was maybe not taking an opportunity when it was there.
"That always happens though, you're not going to get every moment go in your favour."
The mood is very different now to when Neil took over, but the head coach is at pains to point out that it is the players who deserve the lion's share of the credit. He said: "I tried to come in and influence things in a positive way, give them a structure to work from, and an understanding of what we need to do.
"The one thing I don't want to do is say it is down to one person - and I think that goes for all players, for coaches, for managers. What I have got is a very good squad, they are really hugry and want to do well, and all I have tried to do is hone their efforts and skills into something where they can make the best use of what they have got.
"The simple fact is, though, the hard work is done by them. It's one thing talking about it and saying 'this is what we need to do', the hardest bit is actually doing it."
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