There have been a few surprises this season in the Championship. The upturn in fortunes at Wolves, and to a lesser extent at Cardiff, were not widely predicted, but the most astonishing of them has been at the opposite end of the table. I am referring, of course, to the demise of Sunderland. When they said at the start of the season that they only wanted to spend one season in the Championship, I’m sure that this was not what they had in mind. Their spiteful gloating when Newcastle were relegated in 2016, has come back to bite them. Such is the way with local rivalry.
They are not the first team to suffer such a rapid and scary decline, and they won’t be the last. But invariably such a decline on the playing side coincides with problems off the pitch.
The most staggering example of mismanagement for me is the story of Jack Rodwell. The facts and figures for Rodwell are staggering. Man City bought him from Everton at the start of the 2012-13 season because he was showing great potential as a 21-year-old. Two years later, having made only 16 Premier League starts, they sold him on at a loss of a couple of a million pounds to Sunderland. There was a bit of a clue there that he had been a disappointment at Man City, probably partly to do with injuries, but nevertheless he was no longer a player on the rise.
Sunderland, however, saw fit to give him a five-year contract at a reported £70,000 a week, with no clause to drop his wages if relegated! He has started only 67 league games for Sunderland in 4 seasons, including only 2 starts this season in the Championship. Apparently, a clause kicks in for next season, the final year of his contract, and he will only earn a mere £40,000 a week in League One, for playing goodness knows how few games. No team in their right mind would buy him, and he can sit at home watching his bank balance go up if he so wishes. I cannot imagine there will be another player in League One on such a salary, unless of course it is another Sunderland player.
I know that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but what were the powers-that-be at Sunderland thinking when they offered him such a deal four years ago? This is Sunderland we are discussing here, not one of the big six, who can afford to make a whopping mistake now and then. Is there another club in England with such an exaggerated opinion of itself. They couldn’t fill their 49,000-seater stadium when they were in the Premier League. They have just over half filled it this year. The regulars will be rattling around the stands next season in League One. They are apparently in debt (no surprise there), and the owner is ready to give the club away to someone prepared to take on the current mess.
The real tragedy, at the end of the day, is that it’s the poor supporters who suffer the most, not the overpaid journeyman players, or the chairmen with their massive egos. Their beloved club is in chaos, and they have my deepest sympathies, because they now must get used to the idea that things may never be the same again.