It’s been one of the running themes at Sunderland in recent times — the gradual phasing out of the first team picture of the players whose efforts over a four-year period helped the club to regain a place at the top table of English football, with Trai Hume and Luke O’Nien the two solitary members of the ‘Class of 2022’ still featuring regularly in a red and white shirt during the 2025/2026 season.
In recent weeks, Dennis Cirkin’s departure (I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a good deal of Championship
interest in the left back) and Dan Neil’s move to Rangers (an objectively excellent opportunity for him, it must be said) drew two further lines beneath the Stadium of Light careers of two immensely likeable and talented footballers.
However, with thoughts turning to 2026/2027 and the need to balance the squad more than likely uppermost in the recruitment team’s mind, what of Anthony Patterson, a two-time Wembley victor, a local lad that progressed through the ranks to keep goal for the Lads at senior level, and a goalkeeper of considerable promise?
One to watch, you would have to say, with various clubs periodically linked with a move yet nothing of any substance as of the time of writing. In some ways, the fee we might receive for Patterson is almost academic — it’s far more important that he secures the right move at such a critical juncture of his career.
I would love to think that by the time the summer window closes and the music eventually stops, the homegrown goalkeeper finds himself at a club at which he can begin to, if not make up for lost time — because he’s still young and boasts potential in spades — yet certainly relaunch a career that although still in its relatively early stages at senior level, is undoubtedly in need of a pick-me-up.
Despite his Wembley heroics in 2022 and 2025, Patterson’s always had his doubters and there seemed to be a consensus that following promotion to the Premier League, entering the 2025/2026 season without a more commanding and all-court presence between the sticks could potentially be costly, and the arrival of Robin Roefs from NEC Nijmegen ultimately vindicated that decision.
When it became obvious that Roefs was our new number one — something that was evident within half an hour of his league debut against West Ham, to be brutally frank — the priority regarding Patterson changed; he needed to find another path, yet it wasn’t until January that the pieces began to move.
Although it made sense at the time, a loan spell at Millwall and a reunion with Alex Neil that ultimately ended in disappointment as the Lions were edged out of the playoffs at the semi-final stage by Hull City was hardly the kind of move that you could describe as representing a new beginning.
That said, with Roefs, Melker Ellborg and the recently-recommitted Matty Young on the books, the Sunderland goalkeeping line of succession is looking ever stronger and a permanent switch to a new club for Patterson is surely high on the list of the club’s priorities in terms of outgoings, yet it shouldn’t change people’s perceptions of him.
Patterson, like Neil, has been an unqualified success in a Sunderland shirt.
Though it feels much more distant than four years ago, Alex Neil’s decision to bed him into the first team during the pressure of the League One promotion race paid off in spades.
Thereafter, he established himself as a reliable presence during three seasons in the second tier (albeit with a handful of errors that hinted at occasional lapses in concentration and a standard of distribution that arguably would’ve been exposed at the highest level) and his astonishing save from Kieffer Moore’s close-range header prevented Sunderland from being plunged into an even deeper hole during the early stages of the 2024/2025 playoff final.
You could argue that perhaps he didn’t quite live up to the expectations that some of us had of him, but he was never a liability and more often than not, his strengths most definitely outweighed his weaknesses.
If the club sticks to one of its firmest principles of recent times — that of ensuring players deemed surplus to requirements are granted transfers and given the opportunity to start afresh in a new environment — expect Patterson to make a positive move at some stage during the summer, and perhaps we’ll be left with a decent financial return to show for it as well.
After serving Sunderland so well during his time in the first team and becoming a major contributor to our post-2022 rebirth, that’s surely the least he’s owed.
