Wise Men Say: Sunderland's relegation rivals Bournemouth make me sick!

After dealing with Aston Villa and Swansea this month, fate has given us another huge game in January: Bournemouth at home.

Bournemouth, coming around here with their optimism, decent football, team spirit and good location for luring players.

Forget the romance surrounding them, they make me sick.

It’s nothing really against The Cherries specifically, they’re just the latest of in a line of newly promoted clubs who’ve came up and are already competing with us.

If we were sitting comfortably in mid table I’d be enjoying their time in the sun as much as any neutral but with them being a relegation rival this season, I enjoy seeing them lose as much as Newcastle.

Well, I say I enjoy seeing them lose, they haven’t done as much of that as we would have liked lately either.

In their last 10 league games, Bournemouth have only lost against Arsenal and West Ham.

An admirable record considering Arsenal are challenging for the title and West Ham currently reside in sixth place.

It wouldn’t be too unreasonable to suggest that Eddie Howe will set his side up for a draw in this game, looking to keep possession and frustrate the Sunderland players and the supporters.

After all, it’s much more of a must win for us than them, due to us lagging behind in the table.

If the visitors do set up this way though, it could play right into our hands.

Should Sam Allardyce keep to the same system of Jeremain Lens just behind Jermain Defoe with possibilities out wide such as Adam Johnson, Duncan Watmore and the inform Patrick van Aanholt, then conceding possession to Bournemouth gives us good counter attacking options.

If we’re to play on the counter, it would be possibly be one of the biggest reasons to hand Jordan Pickford his second Premier League start.

We all saw how well the England Under 21 international performed last week against Tottenham but one thing we didn’t get chance to see is acclaimed distribution.