Get Your Hearts Racing as Sunderland Embarks on an Epic Soccer Adventure!
“We don’t have time to dwell anyway, we have a derby match to think about on Sunday, and I’ve no doubt that the players will be ready to give it their all”, writes Joseph Tulip.
Sunderland's French head coach Regis Le Bris (R) reacts after the English Premier League football match between Leeds United and Sunderland at Elland Road in Leeds, northern England on March 3, 2026. (Photo by Oli SCARFF / AFP via Getty Images) | AFP via Getty Images It’s almost a year to the day since we lost 3–0 at Coventry in a game which probably ended our hopes of automatic promotion from the Championship. At that point in our journey, promotion was a hope and a realistic ambition – especially after the positive impact made by Régis Le Bris in his first season in English football.
But it certainly wasn’t an expectation. We’d finished 16th the previous season and most people were prepared to be relatively patient. After all, the Kyril Louis-Dreyfus regime made no secret of their ambitions to move the club forward, but were sticking to their guns of not splashing the cash while developing a team of exciting young talents.
The fate of the football gods got things moving quicker than we expected. Coventry were the opposition once again as Dan Ballard’s header in the play-off semi-final became the stuff of folklore, before Tommy Watson delivered the ultimate gift of Premier League football and the sizeable cash injection that goes with it. Sunderland had hit the jackpot.
Not only were we heading for the big time, our achievement unlocked a new door within the club’s spending plan. Within months, a host of international stars, headlined by Arsenal legend Granit Xhaka, came through the door as we set about a task that no team had managed in two previous seasons – that of Premier League survival. The current campaign started just as the previous one had ended – like a juggernaut.
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