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was my childhood home. It’s probably why it makes me happy thinking about it, in spite of the football!
2: STAN VARGA
You weren’t expecting that were you? Stan Varga
is part of a very long list of people who blends in
to the absolute averageness of Sunderland players throughout my life. He even signed twice, playing
21 games the first time and 20 the second allowing him to be, by himself, consistently average. But once, just once, he made me happy. And it wasn’t even a whole game, it was one pass. The start of the 2000-01 season saw Varga make his debut against Arsenal. And this wasn’t just Arsenal. This was Wenger’s Arsenal with Henry, Pires, Bergkamp, Ljungberg.
We knew we’d see some outstanding passing and movement today. We knew they’d score. But they didn’t. We kept a clean sheet against a team who scored for fun with debutant Varga at centre half having a decent game defensively. Anyway, quite early on in the game, big Stan came out of defence with the ball, you have to remember we knew nothing about him, he looked up and saw a run 40 yards away and, with the outside of his boot lifting
a pass that, if he’d have paused the world and taken the ball to where he wanted to put it, he couldn’t have done better. 46,000 people fell in love with Stan Varga at that precise moment, we were happy, we knew it was all going to be OK. Those 46,000 lived in hope and expectation that he’d do it again. And he never did.
round in a week? When Ross Wallace scored what was to be the winner and brought us back from one down to one up, we knew it was going to be OK. We knew he’d stop us from being relegated and maybe, if we were lucky, get into the play-off spots. Even in my wildest dreams as I walked away from Pride Park that day I couldn’t have hoped we’d win the league. But we did. And we knew it was all going to be OK.
4: THE 98-99 SEASON
Now, that Roy Keane season is all a bit of a blur.
I remember Southend away with painful clarity, Derby obviously and then I remember the party at Luton Town but most of it was a battle. Hard work and determination and results all merging into one. 98-99 was different. You’ll often hear the chant ‘you’re in the wrong division’. Normally hurled at teams so woefully inadequate that their only hope is that their relegation will be speedy and they can enjoy the last month or so of their season without pressure. But that season, 98-99, we were in the wrong division in a good way. We’d ended the 97-98 season with... well let’s not talk about that... but we were very very nearly ready for the Premier League and then we improved over the summer. The attitude was right, the players were ready and the following season we proved it. We ended up winning that league by 18 points. We scored 3
or more goals 12 times. We kept 25 clean sheets. Having lost to Watford (who were also promoted)
3: DERBY COUNTY, SEPTEMBER 2006
While we finished seventh that season, all the hope and expectation gradually ebbed away until, in
2006 we were relegated. Quinn bought the club
and, while there was a glimmer of hope, our start
to the season soon removed that. And then we got
a world class manager... who’d never managed. Quinn’s description of Keane was bizarre but, and you’ll notice a theme developing here, there was hope again. He signed a lot of players just before
the deadline (including Stan Varga from Celtic) and, against Derby away, most of them made their debuts. But surely this was too tough a challenge, surely even a genuinely world class manager couldn’t turn us
ALOVESUPREME
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BY GILES MOONEY