Born on this day is one of Sunderland's worst ever manager, Simon Grayson. He managed the Black Cats for a total of 18 games, before being sacked on Halloween 2017– much to the fan’s relief.
As a player, he played in the Premier League for Leicester City, Aston Villa and Blackburn Rovers, before moving into the Football League with Sheffield Wednesday, Stockport County, Notts County, Bradford City and Blackpool. Grayson won promotion twice with Leicester City, both via the playoffs, following those up with a League Cup win in 1996–97; with his next piece of silverware coming at Blackpool in 2003–04, when he lifted the Football League Trophy.
Grayson was a great deal more successful with the four teams he managed prior to his career at Sunderland, guiding Blackpool to promotion into the Championship in 2006-07, and shortly after, leading Leeds United back to the Championship in 2010. If that was not enough to instil the Sunderland fans with hope, after his time at Blackpool and Leeds Grayson proceeded to gain promotions with Huddersfield town and Preston North End. A pattern of promotions he sadly did not replicate with the Black Cats.
On the 29th of June 2017, Grayson was named as the new manager of the recently relegated Championship side, Sunderland - replacing David Moyes. With the hopes of gaining swift promotion back to the top flight of English Football, Grayson had his first league game in charge on the 4th of August where, against Derby County, the lads drew 1-1. In his following fixture as manager, Grayson’s team beat Norwich City at Carrow Road, with the game ending with a pleasing 3-1 win. Sunderland went on to record another draw, before entering into a four-game losing streak, before a single point was added to the table. After a 2–1 defeat to Cardiff City, Sunderland dropped into the dreaded relegation zone, a distance away from the promotion places many had once hoped to see the team sitting in.
In September, the manager slowly started falling out of favour with the fans and, if the previous scores weren’t enough, they suffered a 5–2 loss to Ipswich town, adding even more fuel to the fans’ fire. It was this fateful result that caused Sunderland to drop to 23rd in the league. Grayson's team then recorded three consecutive draws, sadly not moving from their league position. He was dismissed after a 3–3 home draw with Bolton Wanderers on 31st of October, with Martin Bain thanking him, but blaming the results that ultimately, were ‘not good enough for a club of this stature’. Of course, the ‘fundamental changes’ Bain outlined during his dismissal of Grayson were not met, and the Black Cats were subsequently relegated into League One. Simon Grayson being named as one of Sunderland’s ‘less favourable’ managers would turn out to be the understatement of the year, going down in history as one of Sunderland’s most unsuccessful managers.
After leaving Sunderland, Grayson proceeded to manage Bradford City and made a return to Blackpool, later being sacked after only managing to gain 4 out of 27 possible points. In more recent times, Grayson managed one game for Kendal Town in the October of 2020, covering a self-isolating Chris Humphrey, and on the 31st of January 2021 he took over from previous Fleetwood Manager and pantomime villain Joey Barton, before leaving around 10 months later. He's now managing Indian side Bengaluru FC. Bizarrely enough, the Indian League is also ran by Martin Bain...
