OTD: KEANE OUT, SBRAGIA IN

On this day in 2008, it was all change on Wearside as Roy Keane resigned. Ricky Sbragia was appointed interim manager and kept us up that season!

As a player, Ricky was initially part of the youth set up at Rangers but he made his start in senior football at Birmingham City. He made a handful of appearances before going out on loan to Morton. After his loan, he ended up transferring to Walsall in a bid for more game time.

He spent a couple of seasons at Walsall and went up into the Third Division of English football, finishing second to gain automatic promotion. He was then bought by fellow Third Division side Blackpool for £35,000.

Sbragia didn’t spend too much time with the Seasiders however, after 22 appearances he moved to York City. He would end his career with York, after playing over 150 times for them. He once scored a goal against Liverpool whilst on their books.

He finished his career on loan at Darlington but he didn’t rack up many appearances before hanging up his boots. The management route was the next step, he wound up at Manchester United’s youth setup, where he nurtured a young Mag slayer, Kieran Richardson. Before Manchester United, he became a youth-team coach in 1994 at Sunderland and eventually became the reserve team coach. He went to Man U in 2002 and stayed until 2005, at which point he became a first-team coach at Bolton Wanderers.

In 2007 he came back to Wearside as a coach, working as a part of Roy Keane’s coaching staff. But following Keano’s resignation Ricky stepped up and became the interim coach. Sbragia’s first game in charge of the Lads saw us lose to his former side, Manchester United, we then went on to thrash West Bromwich Albion 4-0 and Hull City 4-1. Ricky was soon after appointed as the permanent manager of the club on an 18 month contract.

Ricky kept us up that season, we secured safety on the final day thanks to Middlesbrough and the Mags. We lost our last game of the season, we actually only picked up one point in our final five games but thanks to Newcastle United losing to Aston Villa and Boro losing to West Ham United, we found ourselves two points above the drop.

After securing safety, whilst laughing at the Mags going down, Sbragia decided to take a step back from managing the club. He turned to a scouting role for a few years before leaving to work for his nation’s youth side.

He spent some time managing several of the younger sides for Scotland, ranging from the Under-17 squad up to the Under-21 side. Before retiring he went back to Manchester United between 2017 and 2019 to manage the Under-23 team but he remains a fan of the Lads to this day. He definitely remembers the amazing fanbase we have, as he once reacted to our Instagram story saying “Not surprised” when we announced that the club had sold 40 thousand tickets for our play-off match against Sheffield Wednesday in 2022!