SOBS' MID-SEASON REVIEW

With Sunderland's season now well and truly underway, and the derby fast approaching, Sobs from ALS was asked by the club to write about his thoughts on how 2025/26 has gone so far...

The middle of December seems a fair time to assess what our newly-promoted side has achieved – we’re past the heady excitement of arriving in the Prem, there’s been time for the new signings to settle in, and the rest of the league have had enough time to work out what we’re about.

I think it’s fair to say that we’ve surprised the lot of them – and our fans. We in the stands, who surfed that wave of progress generated by Regis, despite being apparently becalmed once a play-off place was secured, that smashed onto the shores of the Premier League with those never-to-be-forgotten Coventry and Sheffield United games, fully expected big changes in the summer. What we didn’t expect was that the changes would work so well, we’re competing in games that are light years ahead of anything we’ve seen in a decade, and we fans are loving it.

As our transfer record was broken on a regular basis, we’d only really heard of three arrivals, and one of those because he’d recently scored against England. Adingra we’d seen on MOTD, and Xhaka – well, everybody sat up and took notice when he joined the party. Probably our best signing, as his commitment signalled to others that we were a career move well worth making. However, we have to thank those who’d made the difference last season for maintaining the ‘Til The End mindset. That the scorers against West Ham weren’t newbies was vastly important, and they’ve looked at home in their new environment.

After four months we can look back and wonder how we got Reinildo for nothing, how we paid less than £20m for Alderete and Mukiele combined – the list goes on. We hit the ground running, but feared the worst when Diarra was injured. Have we missed him? Not so you’d notice, which is testament to the brilliant recruitment. Add to that all those injury-time goals, the Lambton Worm Tifo, the foghorn calling the faithful to their seats, the new bridge -the whole experience. It’s all brought us where we are now, and it’s a very good place  - one that we deserve to occupy.