Page 120 - 368603 LP250721 AWY AWY AWY Book (238pp A5)

through at least one bad patch per season and our first five games will hopefully prove to be ours.
Niall Quinn found himself in a very tight spot as the season approached as due to the constrictions of the due diligence process, which to the uninitiated means that the consortium buying our club had to carefully go through the books, contracts etc of Sunderland A.F.C., there was very little time to appoint a manager. Without a good manager, quality players couldn’t be tempted to join us. Just after our lowest point – the 2-0 League Cup defeat by Bury - news emerged that Roy Keane would probably become our new manager and it felt like our season had started again. Six new signings and two victories later we’re in a different space altogether and instead of facing the awful prospect of spending at least a season in the Championship, I think we have a serious chance of making it into the top six come the beginning of May.
Five of our new players played at Derby and all received plaudits, especially Wallace, who scored the winner, and Kavanagh. We can look forward to the prospect of an experienced goal-scorer, Dwight Yorke, coming into contention for a starting place against Leicester this Saturday as well as ex-Barcelona midfielder, Arnau, who’d impressed in the limited time he’d had in his one sub’s appearance; we can’t count the three minutes he managed at Bury before he was sent off. Swedish international Hysen was many people’s man of the match in our win against West Brom but was only
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