The departure of Roy Keane from Sunderland, weeks earlier than this date in 2008, sent shockwaves through the football community. Keane’s position was almost perceived as untouchable after the heroic way
he transformed the club from languishing at the bottom of the league in the English second tier to a team competing in the Premier League.
His stature and presence brought a lot to the football club, but also led to his downfall, as his ego appeared to become too much for some players to handle after a few negative results.
After his resignation, one of his coaches, Ricky Sbragia, steadied the ship with a narrow late defeat to Manchester United, along with a fantastic 4-0 home victory against West Brom. He carried this form into the next game, which was on this day in 2008 when Sunderland defeated Hull City 4-1.
In an entertaining, yet error-strewn game, Sunderland came out on top in the last twenty minutes after Hull defender Sam Ricketts was sent off.
This allowed the attacking duo of Djibril Cissé and Kenwyne Jones, who Hull manager Phil Brown labelled as ‘a front two a lot of managers in the Premier League would take very happily’, to score a goal each to solidify victory after Steed Malbranque had opened the scoring for us.
After the game, a shy Sbragia appeared uneasy with the newfound fanfare that his stewardship was bringing to the table and in his interview with BBC’s Match of the Day, the player could be heard demanding that he was given the job on a full-term basis, much to his embarrassment.
Also interviewed after the game were the aforementioned strike duo of Jones and Cissé, who both mentioned their respect and admiration for their caretaker coach and expressed their enthusiasm for the idea of him earning the job on a full-time basis.
Jones was first to speak, where he stated his respect for the Scot.
He has our respect, and we have his.
He is basically continuing the work he has been doing behind the scenes and just trying to take the club and the team forward. The only thing you could do was be happy for him if he was made permanent manager.
This was followed by the Frenchman Cissé, who suggested that this case was simiar to the one he had at his former club Marseille when their manager got sacked early into the season.
“Ricky is a really good guy,” said Cissé. “He is quiet on the training pitch and doesn’t really like to talk about himself much. He doesn’t really like to be overly expressive, but he is really good and, for the moment, there is no reason for us to change the situation. It is working at the moment so we should give him a chance.
“When I was at Marseille, the same thing happened to me. When we changed manager, we were in the bottom three. But by the end of the season, we finished second. That just shows how things can turn around.”
The mood around Wearside had flipped completely in only a couple of weeks as the sudden negativity that was surrounding the Keane era was replaced with the enthusiastic vibes under Sbragia. In many ways, it was as if the squad had now been given a new found freedom that was eradicated under the previous manager and were permitted to express themselves more again.
Sbraigia was given the permanent job a week later but the spell did not work out (as many of these caretaker ones don’t) as the longer the season went on, the more it was visible that he was not cut out for being a full-time manager.
