They say that the secret of a good relationship is honesty. Trust and honesty. Trust, honesty and not turning into a horrendous shadow of yourself, rendering your partner unable to even look at your stupid face, lest they retch at what you have both become. Something like that, anyway. There is of course such a thing as too much honesty, and most of the occasions for which that maxim applies have to do with size, but sometimes it has to do with football.  Take Gus Poyet, for example. Everyone knows that unless something in the realms of the plain implausible and ludicrous happens, his Sunderland side will be on the business end of a terrific shoeing from Chelsea today. For Sunderland are, by common consensus, no good at all, while that same most common of consensus (and the league table, obvs) tells us that Chelsea are brilliant. You know this, we know this, Gus knows this, the Sunderland players know this and the Sunderland fans know this. Everyone, in short, knows this. But still, there’s no need to, you know, actually say it:  “They are unbeaten in the Premier League and the best team in the country by far. They were strong title favourites before the season started and now they’re even bigger favourites...It (Chelsea’s win over Schalke in the week) was a perfect Chelsea performance. Let’s hope they’re not perfect against us. It’s going to be difficult but it’s a great chance and we’re the ones with the opportunity to end their unbeaten League run this season. Let’s try.”  The thing that Sunderland have in their favour/have to cling to is that they somewhat improbably beat Chelsea twice last term, knocking them out of the Capital One Cup and then somehow pulling off that lunatic result in the closing stages of the season that not only kept their survival hopes alive, but actually saw them stay up relatively comfortably in the end, when Poyet had rather openly given up a few weeks earlier. The chances of a repeat in this one rank somewhere near both managers deciding to sack off the football and decide the destiny of the three points by wrestling nude on the touchline...but it could still happen.  This is, after all, the season of chaos in the Premier League. Nobody knows what’s going on, nobody is really any good, and anybody can beat anybody. When several very moveable objects collide then they are wont to go everywhere, which of course makes all of this terrific fun. Let’s hope some of that saunters into town this evening.
Sunderland battled to a well-earned 0-0 draw with Chelsea at the Stadium of Light, and Gus Poyet’s side could well have won the game in the second half