On this day in 1985 a 2-0 defeat at Filbert Street and West Ham defeating Norwich City confirmed Sunderland’s relegation to the Second Division.
The 1984/85 season is probably best remembered for Sunderland’s run to the final of the League Cup, along the way defeating Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest, Tottenham Hotspur, Watford and Chelsea before losing out to Norwich. Unlike in 2013/14 though, where we also reached a League Cup final, we were unable to avoid dropping into the second tier.
That loss at Wembley utterly destroyed the rest of our season and we would win just one more game in our remaining 12 fixtures, ironically enough against Coventry City a side we haven’t beaten away from home since.
It was a late collapse that undid us, we hadn’t been in the bottom three at all until a 0-0 draw at Roker Park in early April in the Wear-Tyne Derby on the back of three straight league defeats finally saw us drop into the danger zone.
We climbed our way out and kept our heads above the water with four points from our next three matches however just one point from a possible nine supervened this and that led us to a situation where confirmation of relegation was a possibility in the penultimate fixture of the campaign and final away fixture of the season.
It was hardly a glorious final stand unfortunately as Gary Lineker scored twice in seven minutes to have us 2-0 down within the opening 25 minutes. The only positive at all was that Chris Turner denied Lineker from the spot to prevent a hattrick with 15 minutes to go.
A late Ipswich goal on the final day of the season meant we would go down with a whimper but fortunately things got a lot better the following season as we appointed Lawrie McMenemy as our manager…
