DISRUPTION PART THREE: LEVITATION

“A path always remains a path. It's a path during the day, it's a path during the night and it's a path during the dawn." - Valeriy Lobanovskyi

There are some things to be relished about living in the Netherlands - bitterballen, a three-day working week, Pommelien Thijs (she is Belgian) but most of all, the short flight that connects Amsterdam to the North-East. Thus it was possible to ‘jet in’ for the Burnley game, a ‘Siberian night’ featuring survival in the streets of Roker by the warmth of post-match chips, in which the Lads delivered a statement win and Talbi capped it with a superb strike in off the crossbar.

The first of two enormous questions this season, who is the top team in the North-East? Was answered on 13.03.2026 and brings full circle the point I have made before, that Sunderland are the region’s number one team, and as I pointed out before, this has been shown time and again since the 1999/2000 season.

The second question, and the one I want to discuss here, is: who is the biggest club and, with this, are Sunderland’s owners capable of organising the kind of consolidation that can deliver a sustainable top-flight status and with it the recently unimaginable prospect of European football?

The early signs were initially not good, little activity during the January window and a mounting list of injuries, a lot of draws and dwindling levels of incisiveness in the final third. This sense of an opportunity being missed in real time was only partly alleviated by gossip from Brussels that Nelson Angulo is regarded by locals as a very decent player. But where is the coming of the second striker (Woltemade, I hear you whisper)? Was this the gamble of moneyball theory and data analytics coming home to roost in the form of lowly league position?

It seems not actually, because here we are folks. In tenth place at the time of writing, Premier League status fully secured with the 2-1 victory and only one or two wins away from rejoining the top six. It is what Taylor Swift would tamely call Wildest Dreams… what Bruce Springsteen would call Better Days on the mean streets of football and for certain commentators it is no doubt their (least) Favourite Worst Nightmare. So, are there any grounds for not being entirely satisfied and tempting critics to call this “B&M”?

I once climbed an extreme rock route and then later read about it being free soloed by Alex Honnold, but it still felt like my effort was legitimately a success. No, most definitely there should be no complaints - only praise. But not hubris, the key point here is that Sunderland now have to consolidate and build wisely on this success. It is a business problem that the owners of the Club, KLD and Sartori, should relish and cherish the difficult decisions the coaching staff, players, the whole staff and our fans collectively have enabled them to make. 

At its heart is, without doubt, the need to increase the club’s capitalisation so that Sunderland can deepen the playing squad, expand the SOL and keep hold of our talent. Say what you will, especially if you are a mainstream media journalist prone to the theory of ‘The Six Big Clubs’ (weren’t the Mags and Tottenham two of these?). You can spend a billion pounds plus and still not have a team. You can create a 60,000 plus capacity stadium and not have an atmosphere. And, of course, the so-called bigger clubs, even in their death-throes, will go all-out to purchase and unsettle your talent.

All this will be a very tough challenge to deal with, and there will be some nervousness to altering governance in the case that capital comes in from new investors. But something tells me that Sunderland in this incarnation will not flinch, having understood the price of failure, we better appreciate the value of success and the uniqueness of the present opportunity in front of us. Having endured pain and sacrifice our hearts are all the more compassionate, it is clear what our values and ‘identity’ are and now we can be sage about the next steps. 

What we have witnessed this season has been in the making for 25 years, when Dan Ballard thundered in our first goal against Arsenal, it became apparent that Sunderland have returned to disrupt the theory of the top however many, and that we can grow as a sustainable force in top flight football.

We are Sunderland and disruption is our destiny. It is our path, and we will walk it.