On this day in 1988, former striker Anthony Stokes was born in Dublin. Most famous for playing for Celtic from 2010-2016, this Irishman also made 36 domestic appearances for Sunderland from 2007-2009.
Transferred from Arsenal for £2 million, Stokes said he was influenced heavily by the Sunderland manager at the time, Roy Keane, so he chose Sunderland over Celtic and Charlton Athletic who were both interested in the Irishman. Like Keane, he also played for the Republic of Ireland’s international team making 9 appearances from 2007-2014.
A striker, he scored three domestic league goals for the team in his two years with us, his first Premier League goal against Derby County took us out of the relegation zone in December 2007. His other two goals were against Plymouth Argyle and Luton Town in February and May while we were still in the Championship. He had a three month loan with Sheffield United but came back to Sunderland after making twelve appearances for the Blades without scoring a single goal. He also briefly went to Crystal Palace on loan in March 2009 but returned to Sunderland after his loan ended.
Struggling to keep a place on Black Cat’s first team, he was signed by Hibs in August 2009 for a rumoured £500,000 before moving to his dream club, Celtic in 2010 where he stayed for six years. After leaving Celtic, he played for teams such as Blackburn Rovers, Greek team Apollon Smyrni, Turkish team Adana Demirspor and Iranian team Persepolis. Most recently, he has played for Livingston F.C. but left in September 2020 without playing a single game for the team as he “struggled to adapt” to their artificial training pitches.
In recent times, Stokes has had a lot of legal issues including stalking his ex-girlfriend and head-butting an Elvis impersonator in Dublin. While he was playing, he was also barred from the club, The Glass Spider in Sunderland, not for a legal reason but because Keane believed it was making him distracted.
