Editorial: Xhaka’s Sunderland Return Sparks Hope At Leeds

Who knows, we could be sat late on Tuesday night with 40 points in the bag, dreaming of even bigger things as the season comes to a close. Dare to dream – you never know what might happen!

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Editorial: Xhaka’s Sunderland Return Sparks Hope At Leeds

SUNDERLAND, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 22: Granit Xhaka of Sunderland reacts during the Premier League match between Sunderland and Fulham at Stadium of Light on February 22, 2026 in Sunderland, England. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images) | Getty Images

Gav Henderson

Mon, March 2, 2026 at 6:00 AM UTC·
4 min read

As much as I’d like to sit and vent my spleen about Jarred Gillett and VAR, I think that’s been done enough times already since Saturday’s game. If you want to hear what I had to say about all that nonsense, you can listen to me on Sunday’s podcast where I was joined by Martin Wanless and James Copley (Sunderland Echo). In essence, though, I’m absolutely fed up with complaining about crap officiating, and I don’t even think it’s just an easy excuse for us at this stage – if you look objectively at our recent games, I don’t think anyone can say that we’ve been treated anything other than harshly, and been on the receiving end of some awful refereeing.

I actually thought that Sunderland played well at Bournemouth and, had the decisions gone our way, we’d probably have won the game and nobody could have complained. Given what happened, a draw was a decent result though, and I can’t imagine that too many teams will take four points off The Cherries over the course of this season, so I’m relatively happy.

If nowt else, it addressed the slump that we’d fallen into and I thought we got a really determined and battling performance from Sunderland – something which I think shows just how well we respond to hardship.

Granit Xhaka’s return to the fold has been a welcome one, and I think it’s fair to say we’ve seriously missed him.

It became most apparent to me when we didn’t have the ball and we fell back into a really solid defensive shape – he was screaming, pointing, and making sure that everyone was doing their jobs.

The young midfielders like Sadiki and Diarra looked ten foot taller and played much better than they ever did without him there, and our defence looked really organised again, which it hasn’t been over the course of the last one or two games before this one.

I’m not saying anything revolutionary here, but Sunderland are a far better side with Granit Xhaka in it and I’m so glad that he’s back.

The result means we’re now on 37 points, and just three points off the magic 40-point mark – the target that was set by the club very early in the season, that we refuse to look beyond until we get there.

Winning at Elland Road would see us hit it with nine games left to play, and that should be all the motivation we need to go there and really take it to a side who have improved loads recently and are probably dreaming of survival with two or three more victories themselves.

I said on the podcast last week that I feel so sure that we’re safe that I’d give every single listener a million quid if we went down – I don’t have the money to back that up, but you catch my drift. I just don’t believe that there’s any risk of Sunderland even getting dragged into it, as there’s been absolutely no sign of struggle this season, but it would still be nice to hit that big forty-point target, as we can then breathe a little and set some new ones.

Could Sunderland qualify for Europe this season? Absolutely, but our form away from home needs to improve. We haven’t won away since October and whilst we’ve got some really good draws on the road, not winning as much as we should have done is niggling at me a bit, I have to admit.

Not many teams have gone to Elland Road, particularly at night, and gone away with points in tow. It would be a huge signal to the rest of the league that Sunderland are still a huge threat if we could do that tomorrow.

And why not? We mustn’t fear them. Leeds are not unbeatable. They are very good, and we cannot underestimate them, but we aren’t talking about a particularly special side there. If we treat them with too much respect, we’ll end up losing.

We ought to take a leaf out of Fulham’s book and do what they did when they came to the Stadium of Light last week. Make it horrible, quieten the crowd down, take your chances and ensure you win the physical battles all over the pitch. If you get the basics right, you’ve got a great chance of winning.

Who knows, we could be sat late on Tuesday night with 40 points in the bag, dreaming of even bigger things as the season comes to a close. Dare to dream – you never know what might happen!

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