On This Day (11th May 1997): An Agonising End To The Final Season At Roker!

11 May 1997: Disappointed Sunderland supporters sit in the stands after the FA Carling Premier League match against Wimbledon at Selhurst Park in London, England. Wimbledon won 1-0 and Sunderland were relegated. Mandatory Credit: Stu Forster /Allsport | Getty Images I started last week’s OTD in a similar theme, because as a group we’ve been doing this for five or six years now, and we usually check to see what others in the group have written about before us before we pick one and get going.

At this time of the season, however, you realise that all the fun and generally happy ones got snapped up in the first few years, and there aren’t many options left other than the type that occurred on this day in 1997. In typical Sunderland fashion, the two years leading up to this point were an absolute whirlwind. The club had been sleepwalking from one crisis to another after relegation from the top flight under Denis Smith, which incidentally occurred on this day in 1991.

Malcolm Crosby was half-heartedly given a chance after spoiling Bob Murray’s plan by reaching the FA Cup final, then Terry Butcher was given the money to spend that probably should have gone to Smith a few years earlier, then Mick Buxton was handed the job because he was in the building when they gave Butcher the boot. It all came to a head at Oakwell when we threw the dice on two new signings making a difference on a Friday in Barnsley. Turned out one wasn’t very good, the other wasn’t registered properly, and we lost 2-0.

Buxton was out. Because we were all sleepwalking at the time, it meant the appointment of Peter Reid as manager gave the club such a shot in the arm that we not only stayed up, but the following season we won the title with pretty much the same squad of players. Although football didn’t start in 1992, this meant we were part of the relatively newly formed Premier League for the first time.