It was almost like the football gods conspired to create a season like this. When Sir Bob Murray kicked off plans to build a new stadium for Sunderland at the old colliery once the Nissan site had fallen through, it seemed a little bit ridiculous.
Since relegation in May 1991 from the top flight, we’d struggled to stay in the second tier. All the while there was a party at the top of the pyramid with the introduction of the Premier League – a party that our friends up the road had managed to join and even Middlesbrough were part of in its inaugural year.
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But even though the plans to move from Roker Park were moving quickly off the pitch, the club was drifting on it. Mick Buxton might have been tactically astute, but the club needed a shot in the arm as we were drifting towards relegation.
A last throw of the dice was rolled with the signing of Brett Angell for a princely sum of around £600,000 and a loan move that saw Dominic Matteo arrive from Liverpool – a move that would almost lead to a points deduction. The change was made after a defeat at Barnsley where both players were in action, and for the first time since the summer of 1987 Sunderland made an external managerial appointment.
In late March 1995, Peter Reid was appointed as the new manager and he went to work keeping us out of the relegation places at the end of the season. The following year nobody knew what to expect – and we went and won the league title. Talk about sliding-doors moments.
We went from potentially dropping into the third tier again, which had it happened might have indefinitely put the plans for the new stadium on hold. Football was different back then and in a crumbling Roker Park, who knows how long it would have taken to get back?
But instead, out of nowhere, we’d joined the Premier League party.
Because Reid had worked his miracles with virtually the same squad – only Paul Bracewell, John Mullin and David Kelly were significant permanent signings throughout the season – we were playing catch-up to prepare ourselves for the Premier League.
Very quickly that summer Sunderland signed our first player for an initial £1m fee when Alex Rae joined from Millwall, and not long after, Niall Quinn broke that new transfer record when we paid around £1.3m to Manchester City. Tony Coton arrived from Manchester United for around £600,000 and those three would be the only debutants for Sunderland until Lionel Perez replaced Coton at Southampton.
Despite this, all looked good after we had beaten Arsenal at Roker Park in the 22nd game of the season in mid-January, where the three points lifted us to 11th in the table. After this however, we won just once in the next eight.
By this point we were three points and three places above the drop ahead of a trip to Stamford Bridge to take on Ruud Gullit’s Chelsea. It would be in front of the Sky cameras on a cold, windy March day for a game that Reid was looking to stop the rot, and look to repeat our 3–0 win over the Blues in December.
Sunderland started brightly and the game looked fairly even in the early stages, even though Gianfranco Zola was pulling the strings. Dennis Wise forced a decent save from Perez early on and David Kelly wasted a good opportunity for Sunderland – as the Lads attacked the end without a stand behind the goal in the opening forty-five minutes.
Michael Bridges also missed a couple of great opportunities and Mullin forced a good save from Grodas in the Chelsea goal to put Sunderland ahead, and as most weeks we were giving as good as we got, but that changed with five minutes remaining of the first half. Dan Petrescu crossed and Zola volleyed perfectly past Perez to give the home side the lead.
Five minutes later the lead was doubled when Frank Sinclair headed home at the back post and five minutes after the break it seemed to be all over when Petrescu followed up a save from Perez and made it three.
But around the hour mark Sunderland fought back. A looped ball in was met by Kevin Ball, and his header found Paul Stewart a few yards out to pull one back. At this point Chelsea got nervous and it was all Sunderland pushing for a second and it took just two minutes to come.
Ball once again caused havoc in the Chelsea defence and his header fell to Rae six yards out who pulled it back to 3–2 with half an hour still to play. Michael Gray then had a chance after the keeper palmed the ball to him on the edge of the box, but his effort sailed over when he tried to lift it over him and into the net.
The game became a battle in midfield with Bracewell and Ball winning tackle after tackle, and with just over ten minutes left on the clock and all to play for, Ball won the ball back who gave it to Bracewell, who passed it short to Kelly. The Irish international’s touch in the middle of his own half was awful and fell straight to Mark Hughes who ran in on goal and slotted past Perez to make it 4–2.
All that hard work undone in an instant. Two late goals from Hughes and Di Matteo put the game out of sight on an afternoon that Sunderland deserved more but it highlighted everything that would eventually see us get relegated.
Sunday 16th March, 1997
FA Carling Premiership
Chelsea 6-2 Sunderland
[Zola 38’, Sinclair 43’, Petrescu 51’, Hughes 78’, 89’, Di Matteo 90’ – Stewart 58’, Rae 60’]
Stamford Bridge
Sunderland: Perez, Hall (Rae), Melville, Ord, Kubicki, Gray, Bracewell, Ball, Kelly, Mullin (Stewart), Bridges (Howey) Substitute not used: Preece, Russell
Chelsea: Grodas, Petrescu, Minto, Sinclair, Myers (Parker), Clarke, Burley, Di Matteo, Zola (Vialli), Hughes, Wise Substitute not used: Colgan, Morris, P. Hughes
Attendance: 24,027