How Can We Improve The Atmosphere At Sunderland’s Home Games?
What can both fans and the club do to improve the atmosphere at the Stadium of Light?
There are other entirely natural reasons why the atmosphere would ebb and flow over a season — terrible kick-off dates/times, slumps in form, bad weather, you name it.
No club in the world of football can address some of these issues, and no team can guarantee a totally consistent environment every weekend.
Our fanbase should not be expected to create the kinds of atmospheres we’ve witnessed at times since the playoffs every game.
Sometimes, especially in the Premier League, with apparently endless pauses and restart delays, the ‘action’ is so lifeless that someone would have to be delusional to express excitement.
However. Recently, the club has done an excellent job improving the matchday experience.
The new displays, the pre-match build-up, and the changes to the stadium (including the Régis Le Bris) all work together to offer us a huge natural advantage over many other clubs, and I believe they have helped significantly.
Feeling like the club cares about itself, the stadium, and the fans is critical – because if they don’t, why should you?
We need to take some responsibility for once.Nobody at the club compels anyone to leave early. No one called for a mass walkout following Fulham’s third goal.
Those incidents were embarrassing for Sunderland, as they were broadcast on the largest football platform on television. How do you stop this?The million-dollar question, for which I will not claim to have a silver bullet.
I know we can’t just persuade ourselves into remaining till the end—see what I did there? — because it appears arrogant and demeaning when it devolved into feuds amongst followers on social media.
I believe the club and players can have an impact by talking with us, telling us how they feel when they’re working hard to get us back into a game and look up to see 20,000 empty seats.
Do you think it benefits or harms them?That’s an easy message to disregard, whether it comes from myself, the Roker Report, or any other fan forum. What right do I have to tell others how to support their club?
Granit Xhaka has the right to tell us. Luke O’Nien has the right to tell us. Régis Le Bris has the right to tell us.
It would be a difficult balance to achieve, but I can’t think of a better way to get everyone on board and working together than hearing directly from the horse’s mouth how much they need us, whether in minute one or minute 97.
Make it a siege mentality: all of us versus everyone else in the stadium. Oh, and replace that dreadful Ready To Go remix at the beginning of the second half!
Joseph Tulip says…
I’ve observed a subtle change in the atmosphere in recent times, which is difficult to pinpoint, especially given how spoilt we’ve been since Dan Ballard scored that header against Coventry in the play-offs.
We returned to the SoL in August, with Granit Xhaka and a slew of pricey new recruits in our starting lineup – a clear declaration of intent to simply survive in the Premier League. Why? Because in the previous two seasons, no promoted club avoided relegation.
On the first day of the season, we faced West Ham as underdogs, with most fans beaming with pride at how far the team had come in such a short period of time. The atmosphere in that game, and for many in the new campaign, was great.
The place was rocking, our players didn’t give their opponents a second thought on the pitch, and the crowd roared with every tackle, pass, shot, and goal.
After three decades of watching the Lads, I was concerned that this might not last. Even I have been startled by how quiet and, dare I say it, anticipatory the stadium has gotten.
Last season, we weren’t even considered contenders for promotion. We had an underdog mindset coming into the play-offs and, despite player turnover, carried it into the Premier League.
We all need to remember where we came from. Four calendar years ago, we were in League One and needed the play-offs to get out at the fourth attempt.
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