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THOSE of us who were at Wembley to watch the Capital One Cup final in 2014 left the national stadium pretty certain we knew what we had seen.
Fabio Borini had scored to put Sunderland ahead after just ten minutes, and for the rest of the first half, Gus Poyet’s Black Cats performed impressively, raising hopes of a first major trophy in more than four decades.
Yaya Toure equalised for Manchester City ten minutes into the second half though, and Sunderland were ultimately washed away by a Sky Blue tide, with Samir Nasri and Jesus Navas completing the scoring as Manuel Pellegrini’s City side claimed a 3-1 win.
Sunderland’s players and supporters headed back to Wearside with their heads held high; City, who would also win their second league title of the Abu Dhabi era that season, had taken another step on the journey that would see them dominate English football for much of the next decade.
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It is only now, though, that we have come to realise that that is not what we witnessed at all. Instead, we saw Sunderland cheated out of silverware by a club that was engaged in systematic wrongdoing on a truly unprecedented scale.
To quote the Premier League, who issued a vitriolic statement this week, Manchester City were arranging “sham contracts with a number of partners”, as well as relying on “sham agreements with others” to “artificially inflate the club’s revenues and reduce its costs”. Cheating, in other words. Pure and simple.
Manchester City contest the Premier League’s claims and have mounted an appeal. That is their right. As of now, though, they have been found guilty of artificially inflating their revenues and reducing their costs by more than £900m. Surely, that will lead to massive penalties. Fines, transfer bans, points deductions. Potentially relegation to the Championship. Maybe even demotion from the entire Football League.
What of the clubs they wronged along the way, though? What of Sunderland, deprived of so much on that fateful March afternoon 12 years ago?
Sunderland's players are left dejected after the final whistle of the 2014 Capital One Cup final against Manchester City at Wembley (Image: PA Wire)
The Black Cats could be retrospectively awarded the Capital One Cup. That would be something. It would another tally to the club’s list of major trophies and see Sunderland’s players from the 2013-14 season awarded the winner’s medals that originally went to Manchester City. There would potentially be some form of financial recompense. It would mean that Sunderland won the League Cup before Newcastle United did in the current century.
Would any of that really matter, though? It wouldn’t give anyone that moment of joy and euphoria, under the Wembley arch, that can never be replicated more than a decade on. Sunderland’s players were deprived of the walk to the Royal Box and the celebrations on the pitch as fireworks exploded around them. The club’s fans were robbed of that moment of release at the final whistle, that chorus of Wise Men Say that meant so much further down the line when play-off success was achieved, that night of celebration in Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square.
As a club, Sunderland were also prevented from exploiting the spoils that would have accompanied League Cup final success. For a start, the Black Cats would have been in Europe the following season, competing in the Europa League. England’s place in that competition instead went to sixth-placed Tottenham, who progressed through the play-off round and group stage the following season before losing to Dynamo Kyiv. Who knows what adventures Sunderland might have had in their place.
In the summer after their Wembley defeat, Sunderland made six signings. Three were free transfers – Costel Pantilimon, Billy Jones and Jordi Gomez – with the Black Cats also spending a combined £14m on Patrick van Aanholt, Will Buckley and Jack Rodwell.
Had they been competing in Europe, they would almost certainly have been able to spend more, bringing in a better class of player. Maybe that wouldn’t have meant Poyet being dismissed towards the end of the following season, sparking a chaotic run through Dick Advocaat, Sam Allardyce and David Moyes that eventually resulted in Sunderland finishing at the foot of the table and being relegated just over three years after their cup-final defeat?
Maybe, with Europe and the prestige of being League Cup winners, they wouldn’t have had to sell Jordan Pickford as they tumbled out of the top-flight or jettison Jermain Defoe. Perhaps Ellis Short would never have felt compelled to sell to Stewart Donald and Charlie Methven. No multiple relegations, no Netflix embarrassment.
A lot of what ifs. But that’s what happens when you start unpicking events that are no longer what you thought they were. Maybe Sunderland will be crowned 2014 Capital One Cup winners at some stage in the future. Sadly, though, it will feel like a hollow victory.