Sunderland’s Chris Mepham speaks of “perfect opportunity” in play-offs

The latest North East sport headlines, from Daniel Wales.

Transcript

00:00On Lone Sun Lund defender Chris Meppham spoke after the side's 1-0 loss at home to

00:06Queen's Park Rangers and made clear that the playoffs against Coventry City are

00:10the perfect opportunity for the club to showcase just what they're about and

00:14highlight their aspirations to once again be a Premier League club after

00:19several years away. Yeah of course it's a perfect opportunity for us to put

00:26put everything right and especially that game in particular against Coventry

00:30where I think it's probably the most disappointing result and performance

00:34we've had so what an opportunity to go there and give a good account of

00:38ourselves and get a result and get something that we can hold on to come

00:43back to the stadium alive and where we know the fans will be behind us and they'll

00:47play the 12th man at times and yeah look it's not been a good run that we've been

00:54on but for me when you head into two playoff games I think form goes out the

00:58window I think you've got two you know two of the biggest games of lives where

01:03naturally everyone will raise their level and and the fans will be behind

01:07everyone and like I said I think we've got an amazing opportunity now to progress.

01:12And Middlesbrough head coach Michael Carrick has said that there is still

01:15positivity at Middlesbrough despite them missing out on the playoffs and that the

01:20young squad will learn from this experience.

01:22Yeah a lot of good a lot of positivity in terms of expectation from us from me from

01:27the group what I know the boys are capable of what we showed at certain times we just

01:33got to be you know man enough and and and take it and say in the end we come up a

01:37little bit short you know we wanted a little bit more I think we've set our own

01:41expectations which when you have that and you then it creates the expectation and

01:46then you get disappointed if it didn't quite get there but it's a good sign that we

01:50have the expectation and we feel we should we should be up there and we

01:53believe we can be up there so that's something that we've got to take from

01:55it. Without doubt they'll learn from it the boys and yeah there's different age

01:59groups in there obviously some are coming towards the end a little bit some are

02:02starting out and you learn a lot about yourself you learn a lot about each other

02:07and especially the younger boys that have got a good few years left in them I think

02:11they'll learn a lot they'll take a lot from this it'll make them stronger