OTD: AMAD DIALLO BORN

Happy birthday to Sunderland fan favourite and former loanee, Amad Diallo!

After impressing in Italy with Atalanta for a few years, Manchester United paid a reported fee of €25m, rising to 40 million. Regardless of talent, that is a crazy price tag for a teenager which adds so much unnecessary pressure.

After a small handful of appearances for Man United, Amad was loaned to Rangers. In theory, it was a move which would allow him to develop physically in a rough-and-tumble league, but would be playing in a dominant side that would see plenty of the ball and allow him the breathing room to make mistakes and learn.

However, after scoring on his debut against Ross County it all went downhill for Amad. Injuries, combined with a supposed lack of willingness to get stuck in, meant he fell out of favour at Ibrox. It led to a disappointing 13 appearances and three goals.

When he arrived at Sunderland, he actually didn’t hit the ground running. A couple of factors (including building up his fitness and the fact his English wasn’t great) meant it took a while for the Ivorian to get up to speed with the pace of the Championship. At times we played him as a ‘striker’ because of injuries to Stewart and Simms. Tony Mowbray spoke several times of Amad being unwilling to shoot. In training, he would beat his man comfortably but then try and beat him again and again rather than just hitting the shot.

However, it was only a matter of time before he found the back of the net. In our 4-2 loss at home to Burnley, he showed good composure to wrongfoot their keeper and find the bottom corner - leading to the first time we saw his signature celebration.

The talented winger never really looked back from that point. The goal filled him with confidence and we soon began to see the reason United spent so much money on him in the first place. Amad soon scored three consecutive goals against Birmingham (a beautiful curled effort), Millwall and West Brom. They were enough to earn him EFL Young Play of the Month.

Countless screamers followed, as Amad Diallo spearheaded our attack. Amazing link-up play with Patrick Roberts earned praise from pundits claiming the pair wouldn’t look out of place in Barcelona shirts.

It was his goal against Preston which kickstarted the 3-0 demolition, and secured a last-day place in the play-offs. Then, another left-footed curler against Luton gave us hope that we might make it back-to-back Wembley trips, which we narrowly missed out on.

The reality is, Amad Diallo was simply a Premier League player who found a home in a Championship team. He's become one of United's most impressive players (in an admittedly poor team) and no doubt he'll receive a good reception when we play Man United in the Premier League. He notably scored a last minute winner against Liverpool in an FA Cup quarter final at Old Trafford and scored another versus Newcastle United which ended up preventing them from getting into Europe and last season scored 11 and assisted eight in all competitions (his best return for the Red Devils). We all love him and now we're in the big leagues, there's a glimmer of hope that one day he'll make a triumphant return. Happy birthday Amad...