Sunderland's perfectly balanced season

I am weirdly happy for them because everyone wrote them off before the season even started and now they have at least given their fans something amusing to cling to, which in football is sometimes half the battle, and a perfectly balanced record is just such a ridiculous little trophy in itself
 
theyve basically turned the season into a spreadsheet joke and i respect it more than i should, not amazing not terrible just annoyingly tidy and somehow that feels very sunderland
 
It is a silly stat, but it does reflect a side that has been steady all season. They are not miles away from being more than a midtable curiosity if they can add a bit more edge.
 
I dont really buy the idea that this is some huge achievement because being exactly even across the board can just mean you have been stuck in neutral for a long time, and that is fine if you are trying to survive but it is hardly something to celebrate like a trophy
 
This reminds me of a lad in the pub years ago who used to keep a little notebook for every season and he would obsess over the most random stats like clean sheets, late goals, whether the team had won on a Tuesday, all that sort of stuff, and one night he was going on about how a balanced record was the purest sign of a team knowing exactly who they were, then his mate turned round and said nah mate it just means you are average in three different ways, and the whole place cracked up, and this Sunderland stat has exactly that energy, it is the sort of thing that would have the whole bar arguing for twenty minutes while pints go warm and someone shouts Thanos FC from the back and another lad says stop the count like he is running the league himself, football is brilliant for this sort of nonsense because a record like 12 12 12 becomes bigger than the actual season and suddenly everyone has an opinion, the neutral lads are laughing, the Sunderland fans are half proud half embarrassed, and the rest of us are just enjoying the madness of it all because you do not get tidy little moments like this every week in football and when you do they become pub folklore before the final whistle has even gone
 
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