Future suddenly bright as young players shine
SUNNY OPTIMISM ON WEARSIDE AFTER WIN
WITH relegation confirmed weeks ago, bottom spot assured, and with a new club record set for the lowest points tally of a 46-game season, it was the final day of the worst season in Sunderland’s history.
And yet it felt like the dawn of a new era.
With owner-in-waiting Stewart Donald watching on high from an executive box, with six academy graduates featuring in the game – and another left on the bench – the Sunderland fans basked in the May sunshine and dared to dream of sunlit uplands ahead.
For once, the football did not deflate the mood – it lifted it to another level.
Sunderland gave champions Wolves the runaround, running out 3-0 winners thanks to first-half goals from Ovie Ejaria and Ashley Fletcher, and one from Paddy McNair midway through the second half – and that scoreline did not flatter the Black Cats.
Jason Steele kept his first clean sheet for the club on a day when he might as well have brought a deckchair, for all the saves he had to make.
Two teams at the opposite ends of the table, separated by a gargantuan 62-point gap, proved that the Championship inhabits a topsyturvy world.
Sunderland ended up as the only side to have avoided defeat against Wolves this season, and the sole team to have stopped the West Midlands outfit from scoring.
The faith in youth showed by caretaker boss Robbie Stockdale was repaid in spades, as the three academy graduates in the starting XI – Joel Asoro, Ethan Robson and debutant Luke Molyneux – all shone.
Late in the game, he was able to involve three more youngsters who have come through the ranks, handing debuts to Denver Hume and 16-year-old Bali Mumba, and giving Elliot Embleton a run-out, with Josh Maja left on the bench.
Had they been fit, homegrown players George Honeyman and Lynden Gooch would surely have also figured in the squad.
It is players such as these – along with the likes of the influential McNair, and Duncan Watmore – who will form the core around which the club must rebuild.
That rebuilding job will begin just as soon as Donald’s takeover is rubber-stamped by the EFL.
The club has the opportunity to make a fresh start, particularly with Ellis Short promising to leave the club debt-free for the new owner.
Sunderland have fallen a very long way in a very short time, and it will be a very long, hard road back to the Premier League.
The first step will require Donald and his consortium to invest this summer to add to the youthful foundations already in place, and assemble a squad capable of an instant return to the second tier.
Sunderland fans – and Donald – must believe that Sunday’s win against Premier League-bound Wolves offered a glimpse of the future.