On this day a year ago, Alex Neil was brought to Sunderland after we sacked Lee Johnson. Alex had been without a job for almost a year, after being sacked by Preston North End with them in 16th.
He was signed to a short term deal, a twelve month rolling contract (more on that later of course). He was winless in his first three matches, all in the space of only eleven days of taking the charge at the club. To be fair to Neil, he had inherited a squad that had been battered by Bolton, and then failed to beat both Doncaster and Cheltenham.
His first win came on the road in a resounding 3-0 win against Wigan, who were second in the league at the time and went on to be League One champions.
That win put the wind in our sails and from there we never lost a game for the rest of the season. Our form in the latter part of the season saw us clinch fifth in League One, getting us into the Play-Offs. Our record under Neil heading into the Play-Offs against Sheffield Wednesday sat at 15 games played, 8 wins, 6 draws and only 1 loss.
We all knew of Neil’s experience in the Play-Offs, coaching Norwich to Play-Off glory, as well as Hamilton in Scotland. So there was some confidence in him that he knew what he had to do. But there was still the nightmare phrase 'typical Sunderland' lingering in the back of our minds.
Against Sheffield Wednesday in the semis, the first leg was played at the Stadium of Light in front of almost 45 thousand. It was a nervy affair that we managed to edge out a 1-0 lead to take into the second leg, but it felt like we could have had more. A lot of us had worried that our failure to capitalise on the home advantage and score a couple more goals could have came back to haunt us in the second leg, and it almost did.
Our one-goal advantage on aggregate was cancelled out in the 74th minute at Hillsborough, and after that the home crowd got behind the Owls which made the final 15 minutes of normal time rather stressful. That is of course until Patrick Roberts silenced the home crowd with a 93rd minute winner/equaliser. Equaliser for the game but winner for the overall tie and got us to Wembley. The late goal came from some great work on the left hand side from then-loanee Jack Clarke, who ran at his marker and put it on a plate for Roberts to tap in.
Then came Wembley, half of us were worrying about our dismal record under the arch, whilst others were looking at the brighter side of things with a team on a great run and manager who had an impressive record in the Play-Offs.
The lads did their business at Wembley and comfortably got us into the Championship. Goals from Embo and Ross got the job done, and sent 50k mad Mackems mental in the meantime. Unreal scenes.
The 22/23 season began with a lot of belief and hope, our pre season didn’t have the best of results, although at one point I did think we’d see Luke O’Nien and Jose Mourinho throw hands so that was fun. Anyway, our start to life in the Championship got off to the right foot. Alex Neil had two big men up top in Ellis Simms and Ross Stewart and they struck a deadly partnership almost immediately.
Neil only took charge of five games in the Championship, with his last game coming in a 1-0 win against Stoke ironically. Following the win at Stoke Neil effectively decided to stay there. He was missing from the dugouts in our next game against Norwich amid a link to taking the vacancy at Stoke, and a day later he was announced as the new Potters boss.
It was quite a surprising decision at the time, with us being in better form, a bigger club and a more exciting project. But if you look at it from a distance it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise, he insisted on a shorter contract and had been linked with the Stoke job the last time they had a vacancy. Stoke’s representatives had also apparently been at Wembley too, as well as reportedly chatting to him when we went to Stoke and beat them. A few weeks after his departure Speakman said they did all they could to keep him, including offering Alex more than they had in their budget but he turned it down.
Meanwhile, Neil claimed the reason for his exit was to work with a young side with a better academy - that couldn’t be any further from the truth. We have one of the youngest and most exciting sides in the league and are actually performing well, whilst Stoke sit 19th at the time of writing. Suppose the grass isn’t always greener.
His departure may have left a sour taste on Wearside, but I’ll always be thankful to Alex Neil for providing a lot of us with our best day out supporting SAFC in our lifetime.
