From the Archive: Sunderland's fall from grace continues

This evening, paying subscribers can go back in a time machine to May 2018, and the day after Sunderland's relegation into League One.

When the full-time whistle blew at the Stadium of Light yesterday afternoon, the only limiting factor on the cacophony of boos that greeted the players as they slunk from the pitch was that so many of the 25,000 strong crowd seemed already to have left the ground. It had been supposed that relegation from the Premier League at the end of last season might, at least by way of compensation, provide some sort of relief from the perpetual cycle of ever-diminishing hope and ever-expanding ennui that being a Sunderland supporter had become. Perhaps, it was reckoned, Sunderland needed to find their level. A year or two in the Championship, winning a few more matches, might put smiles back onto a few faces.

It hasn’t worked out like that, of course, and irony laid upon irony as they slid from the Championship. First, there was hope. Paddy McNair gave them the lead in the thirty-fourth minute, and held onto it with increasing grimness before, with four minutes left to play, Darren Bent, still reviled in Sunderland for the nature of his move to Aston Villa from them several years ago, equalised. With this came despair, further compounded when Liam Boyce nicked a winner for Burton, two minutes into stoppage-time. Then false hope and anger, with a goal suspiciously chalked off for handball with practically the last kick of the match. And ultimately, resignation. Slender margins are slender margins, but Sunderland haven’t been good enough over the course of this season. And perhaps that’s what hurts the most.