Still reeling from the shocking, humiliating and generally bizarre thumping at the hands of Nottingham Forest, it was time to face our third consecutive Midlands side in the shape of already-relegated Wolverhampton Wanderers. That home loss had felt completely incongruent with the mood around the city before kick-off. The streets had been filled with red and white stripes, the sun beamed overhead, and songs filled the air as we headed across the Keel Crossing, beholding the “Welcome to Sunderland”
sign ahead for the first time. What transpired after has been dissected and analysed appropriately, and it’s time to consign that one to the dustbin of history and move swiftly on.
Even before the Forest game, the trip to Molineux might have been pencilled in as a typical “banana skin”, but in the context of that defeat, it felt like a crucial chance to steady the ship and regain some pride as the season draws to a close. Wolves had enjoyed a brief mid-season revival, where they bloodied the noses of several high-profile sides, before fading away again and reverting to their horrendous early-season form. Lowly Spurs had even managed to notch a win against them, so this seemed like a golden opportunity for Sunderland to turn things around.
Wolverhampton City Centre has an infamous reputation as a “home fans only” stronghold, so we opted to start proceedings in Birmingham instead. I’ve never understood places that insist on this small-minded policy, which only drives away thousands of potential customers to their nearby rivals, depriving local venues of much-needed income in these tough times for the hospitality industry. Sunderland fans in particular are known to be prolific supporters of local hostelries, and we’re generally a good-natured bunch, so it’s ridiculous that fans aren’t able to mingle freely in the same way they do before Sunderland home games.
Anyway, we kicked off proceedings by returning to the Figure of Eight beer garden, one of the best sun traps in the city centre, though its reputation was tarnished for me at the weekend after seeing a sizeable group of patrons doing that irritating single-file queue at the bar trend. Covid restrictions have been over for a while, people.
We dropped in briefly at the Railway pub next to New Street, hoping to enjoy some EFL final day drama. Sadly, Ipswich quickly put paid to those hopes by racing into a two-goal lead against QPR, so it was time to jump on the local rattler train to Wolverhampton, hoping to see a similarly professional job from Sunderland to get us back on track.
Our last trip here back in December 2017 was a completely different affair. Wolves were buoyant, on their way to smashing the Championship with a ridiculously overstacked team of Portuguese internationals, while we were watching Tyias Browning and Brendan Galloway trying to defend for Chris Coleman’s doomed outfit. The whole city felt cold and hostile, in sharp contrast to the muted and resigned atmosphere this time around. Somehow, we managed to leave with a point despite being reduced to ten men, which in hindsight was a portent of things to come.
There was zero sign of trouble with the Wolves fans who had bothered to turn out to watch their already-relegated side, which begs the question of why we couldn’t have been allowed into their pubs, but it’s probably time I got over that. Molineux is a fairly striking stadium with the iconic old gold seats, but its charms are countered by the frankly awful away section, running along the side of the pitch, offering a poor view and making it hard to generate any sort of sustained atmosphere.
Wearing our beautiful blue away kit for the last time, the Lads made a decent start, clearly eager to banish the demons of last Friday as quickly as possible. There was a strangely muted reaction when Mukiele opened the scoring; perhaps fans were expecting a routine win against such a poor side.
Indeed, a routine win looked like the only possible outcome until the crucial game-changing VAR intervention levelled the playing field. It seemingly came out of nowhere, and as soon as you saw the words “checking violent conduct” on the screen, you felt that there was only one way this was heading. Ballard was given his marching orders; we were too far from the incident in the stands to know whether to be furious with him or the referee, so we tried to shrug it off and get behind the team to try and see the game out til half time.
Barring a poor spell in the second half and another incredibly poor goal conceded, Sunderland’s performance was actually fine, and if anything, we still looked the more likely side to win. That only compounded our frustrations; however, as with a full complement, we surely would have had enough to take the three points. Despite our disappointment, the team merited applause for at least avoiding defeat, and we realised that safety was now mathematically guaranteed. Given that it looks like 40 points might not even be enough to survive this season, it shouldn’t be understated how much of an achievement our comfortable end to the campaign really is.
Having apparently allowed away fans entry before the game, the Prince Albert reverted post-match to the same unwelcoming policy as every other pub in the town, so we were keen to get back to Birmingham to take stock in the Wellington. It looks like the pipe dream of Europe is fizzling out, but that was never the real target for this season, and it’s crucial that as a fanbase we don’t make this squad and coaching staff victims of their own success by lumbering them with unfair expectations.
There are obvious and glaring areas to improve over the summer – ten goals conceded in three games tells its own story – but all but the most demanding of fans would have been overjoyed with this outcome after the playoff final. Let’s try and enjoy these last three games against some big clubs and see where we end up; even if we fail to add to our points tally, it shouldn’t detract from what has been a largely successful return to the big time. Let’s just hope that whoever wins the Championship playoffs and replaces Wolves has a more progressive pub policy. Even Boro at least let us use their Popworld…
