Sunderland’s return in style from the international break with a rousing victory against strugglers Wolverhampton Wanderers added weight to the noise that is surrounding the team, city, and football club
at the moment — something I’m sure we’re all relishing and enjoying as we come closer towards the end of what has been a fantastic year thus far.
On Saturday, things kicked off in style with the official opening of Keel Crossing (for those who live under a rock, it’s a brand-new footbridge which links the city centre to the Stadium of Light across the River Wear) – which, for pre-match beer drinkers like myself, has shaved a good half an hour off the time it takes to get from the pub to the turnstiles, and that can only be a good thing. My regular pre-match ritual of supping a Guinness or three in the Victory club was swapped for a crawl from Three Stories to Sloanes, and then the Keel Tavern, and despite not leaving the pub until quarter to three, I was still at my turnstile five minutes before kick-off. Tip-top.
There was certainly a sense in the air that the majority of the people at the game had enjoyed the extra beer or two that had been afforded to them by the extra time spent in the various ale houses across Sunderland city centre, as the atmosphere was buoyant and expectant as our in-form side took on Wolves, who are propping up the rest of the division and struggling big time down at the bottom.
They are in an awful situation, having collected only two points since the 2025-26 campaign started, and we didn’t want to be the first team beaten by them in the Premier League this season — so, despite the unwanted international break, our Lads were on their toes and ready for action.
We started on the front foot, took full advantage through Nordi Mukiele’s excellent opener, and then continued to control the game as we got into half-time — perfect, I thought. I even treated myself to a robot pint during the break, mulling over what we’d just seen with the Lads, and we were all in agreement that we were coasting and were giving good value for our lead.
The second half… well, that wasn’t as pleasant, and had we played someone better, we might have been made to pay, but it was just our luck that Wolves just aren’t very good at the minute, and after they’d failed to really make Robin Roefs work in Sunderland’s goal, we killed the game off after a breakaway led by Chemsdine Talbi resulted in an own goal, which put the game to bed. We may not have dominated the ball as much as we would have liked us to have done, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t deserve the second, something I feel we earned having defended brilliantly from the first to the last minute of the game.
Régis Le Bris was typically gracious in his post-match comments and gave Wolves the credit they deserved for making it a game, but the same cannot be said about Vítor Pereira, who seemed to be in deflection mode and looked down his nose at Sunderland for the way we opted to play the game.
Sorry, Vítor, but when you’re bottom of the league, you really cannot stand there and look down at anyone – substance means more than style at this level, and unless you start focusing on finding ways to win games, you’re going to either end up out of a job or relegated.
Thankfully, having looked up to some of these clubs, like Wolves, in the recent past, it’s nice to be sitting here as their fans admire the way our team play – we’ve come such a long way in a short space of time.
