OTD: RICKY SBRAGIA BORN

On this day in 1956, former Sunderland manager Ricky Sbragia was born in Lennoxtown. Sbragia was in charge for 26 matches between December 2008 and May 2009 and helped keep us in the Premier League.

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 won promotion into the Third Division of English football, finishing second (and thus going up automatically) in the Fourth Division in 1980. He was then bought by fellow Third Division side Blackpool for £35,000. Sbragia didn’t spend too much time with the Seasiders however and, after 26 league appearances, he moved to York City in 1982. He would end his career with York, after playing just under 150 times for them in the league. He once scored a goal against Liverpool whilst on their books and was part of their Fourth Division title winning squad of 1983/84.

He finished his career on loan at Darlington, in 1985, 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. 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 then 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 in the 2008/09 season, we secured safety on the final day thanks to Middlesbrough and Newcastle United. We lost our last game of the campaign (we actually only picked up one point in our final five matches) but, thanks to Newcastle 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 became our chief scout until 2011, leaving to manage Scotland under-17s. He was in this position until 2012, when he was promoted to managing the under-19s until 2017. Between 2014 and 2016, he simultaneously managed the under-19s and under-21s and then he worked as a team official with the under-21 team between 2016 and 2017. Before retiring he went back to Manchester United between 2017 and 2019 to manage the under-23s 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 40,000 tickets for our play-off match against Sheffield Wednesday in 2022!