by Shake off
The first two series of Sunderland ‘Til I Die were epic. Car crash documentary at its best, full of real-life characters with levels of self-awareness so low they’d put Alan Partridge or Richard Keys to shame [EDM continues]. But as every footy-doc fan knows by now, it’s not so good when the team wins. Try watching five minutes of Amazon’s ultra-drab documentary All Or Nothing Manchester City without dozing off and you’ll see the difference. The genius of Sunderland ‘Til I Die’ lay in its alarming lack of air pressure with PR, giving the popcorn-eating crowd the satisfaction of sitting back and watching things go disastrously wrong, like Arm the Dad really. “We needed series three for Sunderland to win,” announced show producer Gabe Turner at the release of the latest series of episodes, which traces the club’s successful 2021-22 season in League A. one. Seriously? Well… maybe that’s what Sunderland fans needed after the relentless drubbing of rivals across the country as a result of the first two series.
Football moves fast though, especially in the Championship circus, so Sunderland apex 2022 seems an age away now. Alex Neil who? He was gone from the Stadium of Light just three months after his promotion, lured by the bright lights of Stoke City (how did that go, by the way?), and the Black Cats have struggled with two permanent managers since. : Tony Mowbray – whose sack in December last year is becoming increasingly difficult to calculate – and Michael Beale, who lasted 12 games before boarding through the red and white revolving doors marked Make One.
The finale to some seemed to be Beale’s treatment of full-back Trai Hume, who offered his manager a handshake after coming on as a substitute in the win at Mowbray’s Birmingham, only to be snubbed. Beale then went into full Arsène Wenger mode and claimed to have “not seen” Hume, despite being a 6ft tall grown man standing yards away in a red and white kit. Someone call Specsavers. It didn’t wash with the Wearsiders and Beale was gone 48 hours later.
The unspoken problem with the Championship is that too many clubs expect success. At least 20 start the season with goals to reach playoffs or better and most end up disappointing. When the parachute payments expire, as at Cardiff, Swansea, Huddersfield and Stoke – all languishing in the lower reaches – those dreams of a return to the Premier League turn into flights of fancy. But with 19 of the current second tier clubs having tasted the riches of the top flight at one stage or another, fans wanting a return to the big time is entirely understandable, but also unsustainable. So here we are in February. Leicester, Leeds and Southampton – with their big budgets and Premier League-ready squads – are just a slight delay for Ipswich’s unstoppable charge straight back to the top flight. And Sunderland, in 10th place in the table, have handed it to Mike Dodds until the end of the season.
LIVE ON A BIG WEBSITE
Join Bryan Graham at 7.30pm GMT for updates on Manchester City 4-1 Brentford, while Scott Murray and Rob Smyth are on Big Cup duty for Inter 2-1 Atlético and PSV 2-2 Dortmund, respectively.
ANDREAS BREHME (1960-2024)
The football world has paid tribute to World Cup winner Andreas Brehme, who has died aged 63. The former West Germany defender scored the winning penalty in the Italia 90 final to bring his country back a third world title . The talented left-back was perhaps best known for his spell at Inter, where he won the Serie A title and the Uefa Cup in his four seasons there. Inter players will wear black armbands against Atlético in tribute to the German, who was a set-piece specialist during his time at San Siro. “Great player, great Inter fan. Bye Andy, forever [a] a legend,” the club said in a statement. Another former club, Kaiserslautern, who he also managed, said: “He wore the Red Devils shirt for a total of 10 years and became German champion and German Cup winner with FCK. In 1990 he fired the German national team to the World Cup title with his penalty and became a football legend.” RIP Andreas.
STATEMENT OF THE DAY
“How could I be a flop when I only played 12 games and not all from the start? And not in my position, either? Oh well, that’s the life of football, you know” – PSV’s Luuk de Jong laughs off suggestions in the British tabloids that he is up there with the worst strikers in the Premier League after his struggles at Newcastle ten years ago. Read the full interview with him here.
DAILY FOOTBALL LETTERS
The death of Andreas Brehme adds to the list of glorious footballers we have lost in recent times. He personified Germany – tenacity, skill, ice-cold nerves and flowing locks that would kill for them. Auf wiedersehen” – Krishna Moorthy.
I suspect that the people lobbing tennis balls onto the pitch at recent German league games are, in fact, backyard fans of former Bundesliga (now sixth tier) team Borussia Berlin. Expect them to continue kicking stink and creating rackets by releasing thousands of table tennis balls since the club was first founded in 1902 as Berliner-Tennis-und Ping-Pong-Gesellschaft Borussia” – Adrian Irving.
Re: Yesterday’s football. At this stage, long-suffering Manchester United fans would kill for a return to the glory days of hit signings. These days, the grim predictability of new recruits struggling to find their feet at Old Trafford – or indeed at any other stadium – has taken the enjoyment out of the best part of the season: the transfer great” – Warrick Brown.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. The winner of our letter without prize today is … Krishna Moorthy.
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