Your Sunderland-supporting life goes in phases, doesn’t it?
When you’re young, you’re full of naïve hope, expectation, and excitement. As the years go by, you calm down slightly. The brain matures and anxiety reduces somewhat, because you’re in your thirties and you’ve seen it all by that age.
Truth is, there’s so much more to see and do as a football fan, as May 24, 2025 proved. Even those of a 1973 vintage would, I suspect, accept that they found a new way to love their club not three months ago.
As the years roll by, what you hope to get out of your club changes.
The base level of winning a cup, beating the Mags and doing well in the top flight was mine for many a season. Some short-term targets, others aspirational, and one in particular which became expected — but no less sweet every time.
Now, however, thoughts turn to future generations. Lord knows a whole army of Sunderland fans have sprouted since we were promoted, each of them becoming little walking adverts for a utility company the length and breadth of Wearside — and beyond.
It’s what I hope for my kids too, because we all have a plan.
I’m a fourth-generation Sunderland fan (possibly fifth, not quite sure about that). I hope to pass the baton, and so my succession plan is already in place. I’m taking the gentle, guiding-hand approach. I don’t dress my kids in Sunderland kits or force my five-year-old along to the Stadium of Light just yet.
Instead, it’s more about the subtle buying of footballs; a trip to Decathlon to buy a six-foot goal for the back garden, despite being told in no uncertain terms that “If you buy that, I’ll be absolutely furious,” by my wife.
It was purchased and I hid it in the shed for three months, but as the summer arrived, I announced its arrival one afternoon, and I have no regrets. It’s so glorious it deserved its own signing video.
What I don’t know yet, as I approach my forties, is what’ll happen in the future. One thing that’s for sure is my horizon, like all of us, I suspect, feels like it’s expanding.
The signing of Granit Xhaka was as welcome as it was unexpected, and he has started in the manner we had hoped, but tucked away in the reporting around the Swiss’s move was the fact Kyril Louis-Dreyfus presented to him a ten-year business plan for the club.
What it is, I have no idea, however, what I’m pretty certain it is not is something along the lines of “Survive year after year, barely keep our heads above water, throw good money after bad, resign Lee Cattermole, and hope to pull something out of our backsides from April onwards.”
I suspect it was this business plan which made Xhaka talk of the ‘energy’ around the club and the excitement he’s feeling. What is clear is that this is Sunderland’s most important season, not just of a generation, but generations. An opportunity — while not quite in touching distance — is there to elevate this club to another level.
It’ll be a plan based on solid foundations and, crucially, progress. But where’s the end point?
A mate of mine has a pot set aside for a European away day.
I don’t know if his wife knows about this particular slush fund, so let’s just call him Neil — because that’s his name — but he’s had it for years. Something not experienced since 1973, but in truth, it’s never felt totally off the cards. And the truth is, it feels closer than at any time since we almost got there through the back door in 2004, before having our pants pulled down by Dennis Wise’s Millwall.
I suspect Neil might be some sort of Washington Mystic Meg because some day soon, we’ll all need our own little stashes, tucked away not for a rainy day, but for a blazing hot one in Seville.
But then again, we’re Sunderland fans. And there’s always part of us that’s waiting for things to go wrong.
Well, we used to think like that…
