HOW DID IT GO SO HORRIBLY WRONG AT SUNDERLAND?
THe Stadium of Light was supposed to herald a bright new era for Sunderland Football Club, and for a little while they shone as Peter Reid’s side finished seventh in successive seasons.
But in the two decades since moving to their 49,000-seat home, never has the mood been as bleak as it is now — and there have been some dark days for competition.
They kick off the new Championship season live on TV this Friday night to the backdrop of midfielder Darron Gibson threatening to punch a supporter during a drunken rant in which he branded his own side ‘f****** s***’.
He also threw a hand grenade into the dressing room when he suggested team-mates Lamine kone, Jeremain Lens and Wahbi khazri ‘ don’t give a f***’ about the club.
His foul- mouthed tirade is understood to have been caught on a camera phone at a wedding reception at Ramside Hall in Durham on Saturday night and he was later asked to leave by several guests.
The club confirmed yesterday they have opened disciplinary proceedings against the 29-yearold, who apologised but is set to be fined two weeks’ wages. even the statement releasing that news misspelled the player’s name.
Indeed, new boss Simon Grayson was going to be left to front up to the shameful episode at his pre-match press conference later this week until the full extent of Gibson’s appalling behaviour was brought to light.
In short, the club are a mess. And, in ellis Short, they have an owner who must rank as one of the worst of the Premier League era. For he is not an assetstripping mercenary. Rather, his running of what should be a proud and brilliant institution has simply been incompetent and negligent.
At almost every level of the club he has employed people not up to the job, and this is the position they find themselves in — relegated from the Premier League with barely no money to spend and a squad of players who either aren’t good enough, don’t want to be there, or some who think the best preparation for the new season is to get drunk and threaten to punch a supporter’s ‘f****** head in’.
And to think Gibson put himself in that situation just hours after a humiliating 5-0 home defeat by Celtic — talk about stupidity. At least his moronic meltdown deflected attention from the game itself, a supposed 20-year celebration which ended in their biggest ever defeat at the stadium and was marred by violent clashes around the ground. It was a day to forget, not remember.
kone gifted Celtic an early goal when he swiped at fresh air and then complained of fatigue before being withdrawn at half-time. Gibson, no doubt, took note.
New signings James Vaughan and Lewis Grabban argued over who would take a first-half penalty. Vaughan won the row but fluffed the kick. Another new arrival, Aiden mcGeady, was involved in an angry exchange with Didier Ndong and it all looked like petulance rather than passion.
And, in what was a shocker of an afternoon for Grayson’s bargain buys, goalkeeper Jason Steele put in a performance described by one fanzine as the worst at the Stadium of Light in a decade. It’s just as well only around 10,000 home fans turned up.
Grayson can have no excuses, either. He knew what a shambles he was inheriting, for predecessor David moyes told the world at every given opportunity.
exactly one year ago, moyes sat with Sportsmail in the French town of evian at the foot of the Alps and was a picture of optimism and intent. Within a few weeks he was drowning beneath a mountain of negativity from which he never recovered. ‘Bad players on big contracts’ was how he once put it to us over dinner. He was right, but nothing has changed.
Chief executive martin Bain has been equally damning of the club he and moyes discovered last summer, since when Short has tried and failed to sell his stake.
But who would seriously consider Sunderland a sound investment? Perhaps the same people who would consider backing the Black Cats for the Championship title at skinny odds of 12-1, for there is more chance of them being relegated to League One than returning to the top flight.
There was a school of thought among supporters towards the end of last season that relegation could be a good thing, a chance to cleanse the club of the driftwood and deadwood and return stronger for it.
Sadly, it looks murkier than ever down by the River Wear. The Gibson saga is a distasteful vignette of the problems which have long since plagued the entire club.
For now, the Stadium of Light is casting a dark shadow over the city.