On this day in 2003, we turned to Mick McCarthy in a bid to steer a rudderless Sunderland away from relegation. Sadly, McCarthy wasn’t the man to do this, but few managers in football could have kept that side up.
McCarthy inherited a squad bereft of confidence and bereft of ideas from Howard Wilkinson and we had lost 6 Premier League games on the bounce prior to Wilkinson’s sacking. Our Vice Chairman John Fickling suggested that the appointment wasn’t based on the short term for the nine remaining games of the season, but instead it was an appointment that gave Mick ‘the chance to pursue a strategy for the summer and beyond’. Basically, we were down and McCarthy had the task of rebuilding what was essentially a First Division team and gaining promotion the following season.
McCarthy came highly regarded by Niall Quinn when the manager was announced, Quinn having made the last of his 91 international appearances under McCarthy’s stewardship. Quinn suggested he would get the respect of the players immediately and that he leads from the heart. Maybe it took a little bit longer to gain the players’ respect as we didn’t even manage to eke out a single point for the rest of the season, showing very little heart or ability and scoring only twice. McCarthy took the opportunity to use those nine games, giving debuts to Jonjo Dickman, Chris Black, and Richie Ryan – although the trio managed only six Sunderland appearances between them.
That being said, McCarthy was aware of why he was appointed. We were destined to go down – his task now was to take us straight back up. We lost our opening two fixtures but then went on a run of 7 wins from our next 10 matches. Our form was often hit and miss like this and a few patches of poor results meant that we were outside of the top two and had to enter the lottery of the play-offs Towards the end of the season, we a six-pointer to promotion rivals West Brom which dispelled any hope of the automatics. We finished third with 79 points but lost in the play-offs in a penalty shoot-out to Crystal Palace. Palace had scored a controversial stoppage-time equaliser, with keeper Poom the obvious victim of foul play, to take the game to pens, the absolute worst way to end a season. Over the previous fourteen months he’d become popular with the fans through a combination of straight talking and willingness to attend fan functions and talk-ins, happy to share a chat and a cuppa on the terraces at reserve fixtures. Very much a “pint of bitter” bloke.
Despite the ultimate failure of the season, there were some reasons to be cheerful. A great cup run took us to the FA Cup Semi Finals at Old Trafford but we unfortunately succumbed to Millwall. We did beat Hartlepool, Ipswich, Birmingham (though we had to accomplish this through a replay) and Sheffield United. Something to be happy about I guess, and had we gone one further and into the final, McCarthy’s legacy would have been that much more memorable as European Football would have followed, thanks to the other finalists, Man Utd, having already qualified for the UEFA Cup.
The next season though, we finished with 94 points, seven ahead of Wigan – enough to clinch the title, making us the first winners of the newly rebranded but now established ‘Championship’. Despite poor early results, the board kept faith with the manager, and we were far more consistent than the season prior, never out of the top six by halfway through October. We went top with seven matches to go and we managed to hold on to top spot. After a two year hiatus we were back in the Premier League.
But life in the Premier League was difficult to acclimatise to for McCarthy, in part due to lack of adequate investment. Our recruitment this year was not befitting of a team in the Premiership and looking back at some of the signings, although football has changed a lot, it could look like a League One summer window today.
We ended up with a truly pathetic 15 points, somehow managing to have an even worse season than under Wilkinson, and establishing a new record low points total in the process. Obviously, with form like that, McCarthy couldn’t stay in the job and around his three-year Sunderland anniversary, he was sacked.
The events which followed were probably surreal for McCarthy as the Niall Quinn led Drumaville consortium took over the club and Roy Keane became the next permanent manager - both players he had managed previously at the Republic of Ireland, the latter of the two infamously clashing with McCarthy in Saipan. McCarthy was replaced by a man who despised him after a poor season. Maybe, upon reflection, he might’ve thought Keane was right, although more backing by the Sunderland board - and before that the Irish FA - might have helped him.
