Sunderland Are The Underestimated Entertainers – One More Show Awaits

Chelsea getting European football ahead of Sunderland would be a bit like a billionaire kicking a homeless person in the bollocks to pick up 10 pence from the floor from under his nose. Unnecessary, unfair and mean. 

The fact I’m even writing that sentence almost a year on from one of the most incredible May days this club will ever have makes me think this has been much more than a dream; more likely I’ve been put into an induced coma, and received daily suppositories of Skittles, while Mr Motivator videos play on a VHS in the corner of the room at top volume. Such is the vividness and energy I feel towards this club right now, I feel like my life is being narrated by Brian Blessed. 

So, The Blues, you’ve had your fun, won your trophies and travelled the world. Now move over West London poshos, it’s someone else’s turn. I’m pining for lingonberries at Inter Turku, I want to sing songs about Brian Brobbey in a dive bar in Suhareka. Ryanair is launching a new route to Kutaisi and I’ve got a seat with extra leg room. 

I urge everyone reading this to slide into the Insta DMs of Chelsea players and ask, simply, “Are you sure you want to play in the Conference League, brother?”

Can you sense that? Feel it in the air? That’s quiet belief quietly seeping out the air vents of the Stadium of Light. Because over the last 12 months there has always been another hurdle to overcome. Win the playoffs? Did it in the best way possible. Survive? With games to spare buddy. Beat the mags? How about twice – comfortably. Europe – either Europa or Conference? Well put it this way, it’s not impossible that by this time next year you very well might have seen a Mackem in Milan.

Yet as a club all those achievements have been knocked down by those who wish to do so. After all, Coventry were the better side in the playoff semis. Sheffield United outplayed us in the final. We survived because we spent a record amount. The mags – well, they had Champions League the previous week didn’t they, and the match at the Stadium of Light was basically 0-0. In fact no it actually was 0-0. They had to score for us. Which didn’t count. Wait, didn’t they take six easy points? 

But this is what we want. The perennial underdogs. The club with an assumed underlying, yet undefined negative trait which will eventually come to the fore and be our downfall. To that assumption I say good – because you know what it means? Your abilities are underestimated, continually. Thought of as less simply because we are a newly promoted side. To sit here after 37 games and for so many the penny hasn’t quite dropped is remarkable. 

Throughout the course of this season I have compiled a list of odds: both for Sunderland to be relegated, but also individual match odds. And now, finally, I have a clear reason as to why I chose to do it – to tell you about it all of course. 

So let me ask this, of the 38 games played this season, how many have Sunderland been favourites in? Three. Both Wolves games and Burnley at home, which was the only one of the season where we were odds on. 35 matches we were considered underdogs, and in most cases strongly so. Yet Sunderland emerged victors this season when they were priced at 4/1 at Forest away, 8/1 at Chelsea Stamford Bridge, 11/5 against Bournemouth at home, and more recently, 7/2 at Everton.

What does that tell you? That Sunderland are a club that quite literally defies the odds. Nightmare fuel to the Coates family at Bet365, Fred Done at BetFred and Mrs Ladbrokes. If that is indeed her name.

It also tells you there is a quality engrained in the personality of this squad which is hard to measure, define and counteract. I can’t tell you what the result will be on Sunday, but I do know that while Sunderland have this, whatever it is, Chelsea do not. Neither did so many others before them. A dog whistle of defiance is being sounded, and Regis Le Bris’ men have used it as their secret weapon all season long. 

There’s no doubt many clubs would have enjoyed seeing a big pair of Premier League size 10s placed firmly on top of us to keep our heads below the water line. The odds reflected that, at least initially. In May last year we were as short as 4/11 for the drop. That lengthened to 2/1 by the start of October, but it had travelled way out to 33/1 at Christmas. By the time February came round it was only a few giddy visitors fans who were lumping on us at 150/1. On March 23rd, you could no longer get odds on Sunderland to be relegated, which is quite an achievement. 

Yet the Sunderland supporter paradox is that while you might see odds of a 4/1 to win a particular match, you’re still supremely confident of winning; or perhaps you stuck a tenner on a 28/1 top half finish in August. Conversely that very same supporter was still shaking like a defecating dog at the prospect of the drop despite the chances being rated at 100/1.

There are three more games which are worth drawing attention to. West Ham at home for the season curtain raiser saw us rated at 12/5 for the victory. Newcastle just before Christmas saw identical odds. At the time of writing the bookies view on our final game of the season? That’s right. 

Three times this campaign Sunderland has been rated as 12/5 outsiders and on two of those occasions they’ve won.

The third? 

Don’t write them off. 

‘Til the End.