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I would start this by saying ‘the long summer is over’ in terms of waiting for a new football season, but it honestly doesn’t feel like two minutes since Tommy Watson banged in the winner at Wembley. It’s been over two months, and barely a day has gone by that Sunderland-related news hasn’t been broken.
The past 10 weeks have been a period of transition for our club, and a period where we saw how we would set up for the Premier League season. Over the years, since KLD took over, we’ve been paving a path towards a top-flight return, and decisions both on and off the pitch have led us to this return.
My memories of Sunderland in the Premier League are mostly bad, with our slow demise and eventual relegation being something the club was in dire need of. There is fear and concern that the same might happen again, and we might well go straight back down, but there’s something about what Sunderland AFC is and stands for in 2025 that makes my glass-half-full attitude to this football club grow stronger as August 16th creeps closer.
LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 24: Fans of Sunderland Celebrate during the Sky Bet Championship Play-Off Final match between Sheffield United and Sunderland at Wembley Stadium on May 24, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images)
There is a whole generation of supporters who won’t remember Sunderland as a Premier League club. I’m envious of those to an extent; they can make fresh memories of the top division, and regardless of how the following campaign goes, it will be better than some of the dross they experienced in League One.
The 2025-26 campaign will be for anyone who was at Wembley for the two defeats in three months in 2019. It will be for all of those who trekked to Plymouth, Shrewsbury, Fleetwood, Accrington Stanley and many more. It is for every Sunderland fan who stuck by the club through the worst spell in our history. Sticking by our club and getting to games as much as possible is what being a fan is all about, and through this exciting journey, we all deserve to go into the new season with excitement and joy.
We’ve gone from a team of genuinely crap players, signed up in an attempt to just get a squad together for the third tier, to having players with Champions League experience and hundreds of Premier League games under their belt. The social media content shows a group of players buzzing to be together. This is something we should enjoy - we’ve been building towards this point for some time.
SUNDERLAND, ENGLAND - MAY 13: General view inside the stadium during a pyrotechnics display, as a black cat tifo is displayed prior to the Sky Bet Championship Play-Off Semi Final Second Leg match between AFC Sunderland and Coventry City at Stadium of Light on May 13, 2025 in Sunderland, England. (Photo by George Wood/Getty Images)
The new players are in, the team spirit is high, two first team players have signed contract extensions, and Sunderland AFC artwork is taking over the city in the form of a new mural. The city and club is coming together as one, and the countdown to the biggest kick off in over a decade is almost over.
There will be bumps along the way, lots of defeats, and games where we are completely outplayed by the opposition. This is the nature of the Premier League for newly promoted clubs, and when this does happen, it’s so important that we stick together. If times do get tough, we can’t start pointing fingers at people and looking for someone to blame. We need to manifest an attitude of ‘we win together and we lose together’ because every team in the Premier League will be very confident in beating us.
This new Sunderland has the chance to get in the faces of established top-flight sides and show we aren’t back to just make the numbers up, we are going to make a good go of things, and I cannot wait. Haway the bloody lads.