Lee Cattermole believes Sunderland must freshen things up ahead of the start of the Play-Offs this Saturday.
The Black Cats face Portsmouth over two legs to determine who will meet either Charlton Athletic or Doncaster Rovers in the Wembley Final at the end of the month.
Jack Ross’ side entertain Pompey at the Stadium of Light on Saturday, kick-off 7:30pm, before travelling to the south coast next Thursday for the reverse leg.
Despite heading into the Play-Offs on the back of two defeats, Catts is upbeat about the challenge ahead and believes it would be ‘harsh’ to be critical of the progress the club have made over the last 12 months.
“I think it would be harsh to say we’ve underachieved [in missing out on automatic],” he said.
“With the change in the club, from the end of last season to where we are now, I think we’ve come a long way. You can see the atmosphere, every game, every away ground we’ve been to, it’s been like a cup competition for us every game, but we’ve handled it.
“We’ve brought a lot of new players in, new staff, new ownership, almost everything you can change at a football club, we’ve done that this year,” he continued.
“We’re now entering the final period of the season. It’s a new competition, so we need to freshen things up again and go again.
“We’ve got two games, and then hopefully another trip to Wembley.
“In two or three weeks’ time, we’ll find out whether it’s been a failure this season or not. If we don’t go up, I’ll be viewing it as a failure, but I still think we’ve got a strong chance of doing that.”
