Tony Mowbray admits Sunderland are still outsiders in the play-off race - but says the Black Cats have a real opportunity to test the nerve of the teams above them. Sunderland's 1-0 win at struggling Cardiff City yesterday left them tenth in the table but cut the gap between themselves and the top six to just four points with five games of the Championship campaign remaining.
And with back-to-back home games against Birmingham City on Saturday and Huddersfield Town next Tuesday, if the Wearsiders win both they will put real pressure on the likes of Coventry City, Norwich City, and Preston North End, above them. Asked whether their rivals could wobble, Mowbray said: "There seem to be too many teams between us and the top six.
"Norwich are above us, Watford and West Bromwich Albion just below ... are they all going to fall away? Are they all going to feel the nerves?
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"I don't know, I haven't looked at their fixtures. Our fixtures, on paper, at home against Birmingham, if we're at our best we can win; at home against Huddersfield, if we are at our best, despite the really good run that Neil [Warnock] has got them on, we can win.
"That would leave three games left. If we get another six points from the next two games to add to the three we got at Cardiff, then it becomes really nervy because we won't be far off it.
"We might not be in the top six, but we won't be many points off it. Let's just play the games. If we get beat in the next two games, of course it matters to the fans but in the bigger picture it doesn't matter because our target, our aim, has never been to get Sunderland straight out of League One and into the play-offs.
"It's been to consolidate in this division, be competitive in every game, and to create an identity of how we want to play. We won't worry about how Norwich do and all the other teams between us and the top six, we'll just keep trying to win football matches."
If Sunderland are to put pressure on those teams, they will have to rediscover their winning touch at home having last won at the Stadium of Light exactly two months ago when they beat Reading 1-0. Since then, they have picked up just three points from five games on home soil.
In two of those games, injury-time penalties cost them dear with Bristol City rescuing a 1-1 draw in February and Hull City salving a 4-4 draw on Good Friday. Mowbray said: "We've struggled a little bit at home to get over the line and win football matches.
"I don't think we've struggled in general, but to get results we've struggled. It's difficult sometimes at the Stadium of Light when teams come to make life difficult for us, we've got 40,000 fans screaming on so opponents slow the game down.
"Then, as we saw the other night [against Hull City] if you over-commit and play too many strikers you leave yourself a bit more vulnerable. Yet in our last two away games, at Burnley and then yesterday at Cardiff, we kept clean sheets so we are more than capable of keeping clean sheets - it's just getting the balance between how many attackers when you are trying to score and win at home.
"If we can beat Birmingham on Saturday, then beat Huddersfield on Tuesday night - if we get nine points from these three games [including Cardiff] - it will be interesting to see where it puts us in the table with three games to go. It'd be exciting to go into the last three games still with a chance of creeping in, but let's see."
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