It was the second season of the magic carpet ride, and the relative success of eras like this one is always viewed at the time through the lens of where we had come from. Just over twelve months earlier,
Sunderland had sat bottom of the Championship, and the Niall Quinn chairmanship was waiting to get underway.
Enter stage left, Roy Keane. The former Manchester United midfielder had taken some arm-twisting to take the job, but when he did, he made sure we knew it was worth the wait. Well, he did from January. In retrospect, it was a slow burner, and the January transfer window was the match that lit the fuse, leading to an unlikely league title.
As cool and as calm as Keane appeared, I suspect that even he was surprised that we got the momentum we did, and he was a Premier League manager in his second season in the job, but he knew he wanted to take full advantage.
From the moment Keane extinguished any thoughts of an open-top bus parade to celebrate the success, we knew he meant business, and more to the point, he didn’t want to just make up the numbers in the Premier League.
So, on the opening day of the Premier League season, Craig Gordon, Dickson Etuhu, Paul McShane, Kieran Richardson, and Michael Chopra all made their debuts as Keane’s side beat Martin Jol’s Spurs in front of the cameras courtesy of a last-minute Chopra goal.
Three defeats and a draw brought us back down to Earth before our next win, which came in a 2-1 win at home to Reading. The eight games that followed went by without putting a third win on the board, with only three draws to keep the points ticking on. It would be December 1st when Anthony Stokes scored a last-minute goal against struggling Derby County, when the third win came, and next up was a trip to Avram Grant’s Chelsea.
The rain lashed down in the capital as Keane’s hint that he might have to “park the bus” rang true, with Kenwyne Jones struggling up top on his own to keep the ball and allow Sunderland to get out. The away team worked hard but looked outclassed for most of the afternoon.
It was almost all over after just 23 minutes, when Andriy Shevchenko headed home a Salomon Kalou cross to put the home side ahead. Chelsea deserved to go into the break more than just one up, and the longer it remained 1-0, the more we thought we were in with a chance, but when Danny Higginbotham pulled the shirt of Alex in the box, the referee pointed to the spot.
Frank Lampard stepped up and put the game out of sight with fifteen minutes left on the clock. The misery was piled on with a couple of minutes left when Liam Miller was given a red card for a push on Pizarro, which completed a miserable afternoon that left Sunderland hovering just above the bottom three.
Premier League
Stamford Bridge
Chelsea 2-0 Sunderland
[Shevchenko 23’, Lampard (pen) 75’ – (Miller sent-off 88)’]
Sunderland: Ward, Halford, McShane, Higginbotham, Collins, Miller, Etuhu, Whitehead, Leadbitter (Stokes), Wallace, Jones (Murphy) Subs Not Used: Gordon, Yorke, Cole
Chelsea: Cudicini, Belletti, A. Cole, Obi Mikel, Terry, Alex, Wright-Phillips, Lampard, Kalou (Pizarro), Shevchenko, J. Cole (Sidwell) Subs Not Used: Hilario, Ben-Haim, Bridge
Attendance: 41,707
