I thought Sunderland were terrific against Bolton. They had a little scare at the end but they deserved their bit of luck and Ricky Sbragia will take a lot of heart from the performance.
He went 4-5-1 for the game and I thought it worked extremely well. With the extra man in midfield, they outplayed Bolton in the middle of the park. Of course, the counter argument is always that with only one man up front it’s much more difficult to score and Sunderland didn't manage a goal at The Reebok.
However, they had a lot of good chances during the game, many of which fell to Keiran Richardson, who really should have scored at least once.
But look, there have been a lot of people questioning Sbragia, asking if he should still be the manager and will he still be there in the summer - even if they stay up. Well, you have to give him credit for today: he got it right so let’s give him some credit.
That was an absolutely vital point for Sunderland and its significance was underlined by results elsewhere.
I genuinely believe that that point could keep them up because I don’t have much faith in the teams below them getting past 36 points!
So, I really think Sunderland have an excellent chance of staying up now. And it doesn’t matter how you stay up as long as you stay up.
Sbragia, Niall Quinn and everyone else will be saying, ‘let’s just stay up again, for the second successive season, and we’ll move on and learn from our mistakes and ensure we’re not in this position again next year.’
However, I get the feeling that they still might bring someone else in and move Ricky Sbragia to another position within the club.
On a side issue, one thing that stood out for me today was Gary Cahill’s display for Bolton, who were otherwise quite poor. I just wonder why on earth Martin O’Neill let Cahill go. I thought he was excellent in the second half.
Pat was speaking on Setanta Ireland's exclusive coverage of the Sunderland v Bolton Wanderers game that was available in the Republic of Ireland only.