The truth is we'd probably all be a lot better off if it was just a game.

However, tomorrow's match with Chelsea represents far more to the red and white faithful.

Mind, if you had you spoken to me last Tuesday morning then I might well have agreed that it wasn't worth the hassle.

Seeing us press the self-destruct button down at Fratton Park, with mistakes from the likes of Anton Ferdinand, pictured, was all a bit too much, and for a moment or two, I kidded myself that I just didn't care.

Stuff them, I thought. I can do without all of this.

Of course, there was never a chance of walking away. It just doesn't work like that.

I remember a couple of seasons ago in one of our worst-ever Premiership points campaigns (I don't recall which one – I think my brain has blocked it out to numb the pain), I had clubbed together with my dad to buy my nephew his season ticket. In just his second season of watching the lads, he decided he'd had enough.

"I'm sick of seeing them get beat every week," he insisted. "I am not coming back this season, what's the point when all it does is make everyone miserable every weekend."

We looked at him with a mixture of shock and awe.

Awe, because here was a nine-year-old arguing (successfully) against putting himself through the misery of being a lifelong Sunderland fan.

And shock, because how could he just walk away from the club like that (even if he was only nine)? And why should he not have to suffer like the rest of us?

Thankfully, after a season away he was once again the proud owner of a season ticket, and despite the trials and tribulations of this season he isn't thinking of giving up the ghost again. So tomorrow my nephew, my dad, my brother and myself will make the short journey to the Stadium of Light having not slept for a couple of nights, terrified of what we may be about to witness.

We are not alone, and we are certainly not any sort of super fans. But like the many thousands like us, who will be at the Stadium of Light, we deserve better.

Premier League status is not a divine right, nor is winning games, but it's the players and the management who have got us into this mess, and it is them who must try to get us out of it.

Not that I expect them to deliver (it's more of a fool's hope).
Instead, we will all be sitting with a sickly feeling and with sweaty palms hoping that another team in another game will do us a favour.
The Chelsea game is almost a non-event, it's the other games that will probably count, and yet still we will be there in our numbers praying for divine intervention.
Just a game? Chance would be a fine thing.