So much for that then. Fast forward 12 months, and not only have Sunderland survived, they have flourished, with a seventh-place finish securing European qualification for only the second time in the club’s history. Regis Le Bris can claim to be the Manager of the Season. Granit Xhaka was the best signing made by any English club last summer. Newcastle United were beaten home and away. It’s hard to imagine how things could have gone any better.
Recruitment was the key to Sunderland’s success, with the club taking the bold decision to go all-in last summer rather than tinker around the edges of the squad that won promotion. With the appointment of Florent Ghisolfi as director of football supercharging Sunderland’s ability to cherry-pick talent from multiple European markets, 14 players were signed for a combined outlay of more than £150m.
The vast majority turned out to be huge successes. Robin Roefs, an absolute bargain at £11.5m from NEC Nijmegen. Nordi Mukiele, written off by Paris St Germain, signed by Sunderland for £12m, now regarded as one of the best full-backs in the Premier League. Omar Alderete, Reinildo Mandava, Noah Sadiki, Brian Brobbey. Sunderland’s hit rate was truly remarkable.
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Then, of course, there was Xhaka. When Kristjaan Speakman was asked, shortly after winning promotion, whether there was any truth in the rumours linking Sunderland with their former midfielder, Jordan Henderson, he answered, with a glint in his eye, that while Henderson was available, Sunderland’s executive team felt there was another, better, player who they might be able to land.
That player was Xhaka, but even when news of Sunderland’s interest broke, it felt fanciful to imagine the Swiss midfielder swapping Champions League-bound Bayer Leverkusen for the Stadium of Light. Kyril Louis-Dreyfus sorted that, making a personal trip to meet Xhaka and his representatives and lay out his vision for what was brewing on Wearside.
Sunderland's Granit Xhaka (Image: Owen Humphreys/PA Wire)
Xhaka was the spark for so much of what Sunderland achieved last season. By agreeing to join the Black Cats, he effectively validated what Louis-Dreyfus, Speakman, Ghisolfi and Regis Le Bris were doing. If one of the finest midfielders of his generation believed in the project, it had to be worth supporting. Xhaka’s leadership amongst an extremely young first-team group proved invaluable, with the 33-year-old immediately dominating the dressing room. When Le Bris stripped Dan Neil of the captaincy ahead of the start of last season, it felt harsh on the Wearsider, who had lifted the play-off trophy at Wembley just a few months earlier. In hindsight, handing Xhaka the armband was the easiest decision Le Bris had to make.
As well as being Sunderland’s talisman, the former Arsenal skipper remains a fantastic footballer, with his ability to dictate play from the heart of midfield forming a key part of the Black Cats’ play.
While Xhaka controlled things from the centre of the park, strolling around as if he did not have a care in the world, the rest of the Sunderland side tore around like whirling dervishes, with their aggression and intensity knocking opponents off their stride.
The opening-day victory over West Ham set the tone for much of what was to follow in the rest of the campaign, with Sunderland steamrollering the opposition at the Stadium of Light. The 3-0 win came courtesy of goals from Eliezer Mayenda, Dan Ballard and Wilson Isidor, three players who had been part of the promotion-winning team.
Maintaining a sense of continuity from Championship to top-flight was another of Sunderland’s big successes, with Le Bris deserving huge credit for the way in which he ensured the qualities that were so important in the second tier did not disappear in the face of so much change and so many new signings. Unity, humility, passion, commitment. It would have been easy to lose those virtues amid so much upheaval, but Le Bris did not let that happen. If anything, this group is even stronger than the one that came up.
Sunderland head coach Regis Le Bris (Image: Richard Sellers/PA Wire)
Sunderland’s home form was the bedrock for their success, especially in the first half of the season when the Stadium of Light was an impregnable fortress. The Black Cats were not beaten in their own stadium until mid-February, when Liverpool finally ended their 12-game unbeaten run, with some notable highlights along the way. November’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal saw Sunderland go toe-to-toe with the eventual champions, before December’s derby win over Newcastle capped a brilliant year. Nick Woltemade was the toast of Wearside thanks to his own goal, but Sunderland fans had fallen in love with the whole of their squad.
The spring was tougher, partly because of the loss of six players to the Africa Cup of Nations, which was always going to be a significant challenge, and partly because injuries began to bite exposing a lack of depth in the squad, particularly in the wide-attacking areas.
March’s FA Cup fifth round defeat to Port Vale was one of the season’s few real disappointments, with Sunderland’s players delivering an uncharacteristically flat performance against League One opposition.
The Black Cats dropped to as low as 13th position as results in the league also tailed off, but a second derby win provided a massive fillip, with Chemsdine Talbi and Brobbey scoring to turn things around at St James’ Park. Brobbey’s barnstorming attacking performance was one of the best individual displays in recent derby memory, with the Dutchman outmuscling the entire Newcastle defence.
Old faces returned in the final two months of the season – Luke O’Nien, revelling as a Premier League regular, Trai Hume, reborn as an attacking midfielder – and while a five-goal hammering at the hands of Nottingham Forest was a shock to the system, a 3-1 win at Everton in Sunderland’s final away game meant European qualification was a possibility ahead of the final-day meeting with Chelsea.
On an unforgettable afternoon at the Stadium of Light, everything fell the Black Cats’ way with a 2-1 win securing a place in the Europa League as Brentford and Brighton both slipped up. Le Bris’ gleeful reaction, when told that Sunderland were on course to finish seventh, was one of the images of the season.
Europe will bring new challenges, and it will be extremely hard for Ghisolfi and the rest of the recruitment team to match last summer’s success rate when they head back into the transfer market in the next couple of months. How will Le Bris cope with so many more matches? Is the squad deep enough? How can Sunderland possibly improve on what they have already achieved? What a set of problems to have.