OTD: GREAT ESCAPE COMPLETE

On this day in 2014, Sunderland became only the second team in Premier League history to survive despite being bottom of the table at Christmas. We confirmed our survival on home soil, beating West Bromwich Albion 2-0, in our fourth consecutive victory.

Bottom of the table at Christmas is usually a death sentence in the top flight, the only team since 1992 prior to the 2013-14 campaign to have avoided the drop in this predicament was, ironically, West Brom.

Boxing Day began a revival of our season though, we beat Everton away then embarked on a run of just one defeat in six to climb out of the danger zone and into 14th place. It was a good time, we smashed Fulham 4-1 at Craven Cottage, beat Newcastle at the Stadium of Light and just for good measure booked a spot in a major cup final for the first time in 22 years via a penalty shootout at Old Trafford.

Unfortunately the well-remembered 3-0 demolition job against our North East rivals was the end of our run of form, we would not win in the Premier League again until April, going almost all of February and the entirety of March without tasting three points. Our only win was against Southampton in the FA Cup and in back to back games we lost the League Cup final to Manchester City (although there was no great shame in that) and then we inexplicably put essentially a back up team out against Hull in an FA Cup quarter final, which our opponents took full advantage of.

Cup hopes dead and survival surely just a pipe dream with us now seven points adrift with six games left to go after a Wes Brown own goal sunk us at home to Everton, it looked like the season would be a write off. Gus Poyet, in his post-match press conference following a 5-1 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur (our fourth defeat in a row, with Everton being our fifth), said we needed a "miracle" to avoid Championship football the following season. Our fixtures seemed to reinforce this idea, we had Man City away, Chelsea away and Man United in the North West too. Our other games were against teams fighting for survival as well, Cardiff and WBA in front of home support.

Then we went to the Etihad and went behind within two minutes to continue our bad run, except Connor Wickham then netted a brace in ten minutes following the break and we led with seven left on the clock. We couldn’t hold on to a victory however, as Samir Nasri rescued the Blues a point with 120 seconds to go.

Someone then brought a sheet with the words ‘Miracles Happen Gus’ written on it to the away end of Stamford Bridge. We’d surely need one to beat Jose Mourniho’s Chelsea. A Mourninho-managed side had not fallen to a home defeat in 77 Premier League games and we were perfect candidates for him to extend this run to 78. Less than 15 minutes had elapsed before the home team took the lead but we then found an equaliser swiftly via Wickham. A point would be good on the day but wins were needed now no matter the opponents. Against the odds, we were given a penalty late on and Fabio Borini fired home. We ended the unbeaten streak and picked up four points we weren’t expecting in the space of just three days.

A relegation six-pointer came after this, played in Sunderland, versus Cardiff City. We were 2-0 up by the interval and scored another two for good measure in the second 45. Wickham had now found the back of the net five times in the last three matches. We now found ourselves, in spite of conventional wisdom, above the drop in 17th place. It wasn’t done yet though, there were still three games left. The most difficult of these three was Man U, although they’d had a very hard time adjusting to life without Sir Alex Ferguson and had already sacked Moyes, they were still within shouting distance of European football and would be desperate for a win. Expectedly, they dominated the possession and had twice as many shots, but a Seb Larsson goal half an hour in gave us the win.

On the 4th May, the day after we won in Greater Manchester, our nearest relegation rivals, Norwich, travelled to Chelsea and did well to grab a point. That meant they were on 33 points with one game left. We had 35 with two left to play, so a win with our game in hand against West Brom would avoid much anxiety on the final day. West Brom themselves were one position above us, in 16th, and were on 36 points, so they needed just a point on Wearside to guarantee a spot in the Prem for 2014/15 without taking it to the dreaded last fixture, but due to goal difference they were pretty much secure anyway.

We had the game wrapped up in half an hour, Jack Colback scored the first and then Borini volleyed home the second. After losing to Swansea on the final day we finished the season in 14th place, which was the joint-highest we’d been all season. From Di Canio chaos and being written off by everyone, we mustered up a ridiculous set of results that saved our season. This was also the first in a trilogy of seasons where we left it late to dig our way out of trouble, as we built a reputation of being survival specialists.