"Sunderland Til I Die" Netflix Series

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SydneyTiger14

SydneyTiger14

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Aug 29, 2013
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Not sure if this deserves its own thread or belongs in the Netflix thread, but since I want to extend the discussion beyond the documentary and to our own club I thought I'd fire this up.

I've started watching the documentary on Netflix about Sunderland last season, and I had previously watched the similar one done about Man City on Amazon (which is also brilliant, for different reasons). And I find this one very scary.

Scary because, if not for the grace of God, it could easily have been us suffering a double relegation. I genuinely think if we hadn't managed to get Wilson in on loan, we would have gone down.

But I also find it incredibly insightful because it shows a side of football that is rarely shown in the public. It's easy to invite camera crews in when a team is winning and everything is going well, but the ep I watched last night ended with Grayson being sacked after the 3-3 draw with Bolton, and it's pretty compelling viewing. I can only imagine something similar happened when Slutsky was sacked and then Adkins appointed within days. In some ways it would have been grimmer for us as Adkins was actually at Slutsky's last few games.

It's fascinating watching the club try quite genuinely to turn things around, despite restricting funding (I suppose in a similar way to us), although I can't help but feel Ehab's incompetence flies in the face of the genuine efforts made at Sunderland to keep them up. How we stayed up in place of them was, I feel, sheer dumb luck (Wilson, above, the key part of that).

Has anyone else seen it, thoughts?
 
Very similar positions but Sunderland where twice as worse I think. All the players they had where not very sellable or maybe half of them where. Then they had the likes of Rodwell and a few other refusing to play. The fact the have such expectation also makes it worse. The other problem been the chairmen had no interest at the time.

What you say about us is correct though. The combination of Hernandez and Wilson kept us up. However this year it’s all Adkins, our team is slightly worse, but the consistency of keeping the manager and confidence also obvious ability from the team.
 
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Top_Tiger said:
Very similar positions but Sunderland where twice as worse I think. All the players they had where not very sellable or maybe half of them where. Then they had the likes of Rodwell and a few other refusing to play. The fact the have such expectation also makes it worse. The other problem been the chairmen had no interest at the time.

At the time they had Rodwell and a few others on 60k+ refusing to play, we maybe only had Grosicki on day 20k and he turned it round in the end.

What you say about us is correct though. The combination of Hernandez and Wilson kept us up. However this year it’s all Adkins, our team is slightly worse, but the consistency of keeping the manager and confidence also obvious ability from the team.
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Top_Tiger said:
Very similar positions but Sunderland where twice as worse I think. All the players they had where not very sellable or maybe half of them where. Then they had the likes of Rodwell and a few other refusing to play. The fact the have such expectation also makes it worse. The other problem been the chairmen had no interest at the time.

What you say about us is correct though. The combination of Hernandez and Wilson kept us up. However this year it’s all Adkins, our team is slightly worse, but the consistency of keeping the manager and confidence also obvious ability from the team.
Click to expand...
Yes their club was far more toxic. You see the fans turn on the players as soon as they concede, and the players heads dropped so quickly in games.
 
I'm enjoying it but also finding it a bit frustrating as the depth it is going into is rather superficial and there are things I remember discussing a year ago with Sunderland fans which are not being referenced here.

Some of the players comments are illuminating and betray a group of players who were not functioning as a team. We seem to not suffer from that malaise luckily and I think that that made a hell of a difference (in addition to Abel and Harry obvs).

As always the true passion, commitment and integrity comes from the supporters. They may be Maccams but they deserve better than the clownshoes they had running and playing for their team last season.
 
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Ernie Shackleton said:
I'm enjoying it but also finding it a bit frustrating as the depth it is going into is rather superficial and there are things I remember discussing a year ago with Sunderland fans which are not being referenced here.

Some of the players comments are illuminating and betray a group of players who were not functioning as a team. We seem to not suffer from that malaise luckily and I think that that made a hell of a difference (in addition to Abel and Harry obvs).

As always the true passion, commitment and integrity comes from the supporters. They may be Maccams but they deserve better than the clownshoes they had running and playing for their team last season.
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You could say their fans deserve better, but as highlighted earlier in your post, it's them that puts the pressure on their players and makes it so toxic. Booing as soon as they concede a goal at home and leaving after 20 minutes every week. They're passionate, but they channel it the wrong way entirely. Like all supporters, they deserve a club which is run well and in the interest of the community. But they've got no right to have a successful team, particularly as they're a big reason that they rarely have done over the last 10 years.
 
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I've watched it and quite enjoyed it. For me the person who just didn't seem to fit in with the club was the CEO, he justed didn't come across as a football person, and I got the feeling he had a superficial so-called affection for the club. It certainly gave me the feeling that to a large degree the problems were at a high level than the manager.
 
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It looks like the Chief Exec agreed to do it after relegation for a bit of extra cash from Netflix. He probably thought they would bounce straight back up too and not end up in another dog fight. The series does look filmed to make certain people within the club look good. Neither manager seemed really interested in being involved with the side distraction.
 
I was expecting the club chef to be on the floor in a vodka haze by the end of the series!

McGeady wasn't very complimentary about Coleman which was more than a bit surprising. However you could see Coleman gradually being beaten down mentally - he was a shell by the end (his Missus was a bit of all right mind). Grayson did look a bit clueless as OLM said, but he also had the look of WTF have I got myself into on his face all the time.
 
PLT said:
You could say their fans deserve better, but as highlighted earlier in your post, it's them that puts the pressure on their players and makes it so toxic. Booing as soon as they concede a goal at home and leaving after 20 minutes every week. They're passionate, but they channel it the wrong way entirely. Like all supporters, they deserve a club which is run well and in the interest of the community. But they've got no right to have a successful team, particularly as they're a big reason that they rarely have done over the last 10 years.
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Can't see why turning up after year after year of mediocrity in their teens of thousands makes it their fault. As for walking out we have people leaving early during a good win instead of waiting to applaud the team off, or encouraging us to go for a winner if drawing or grabbing an equaliser if a goal down.
Most clubs will envy the sort of support which saw 8,000 travel 150 miles for a Third Division match on New Year's Day.
 
John Ex Aberdeen now E.R. said:
I've watched it and quite enjoyed it. For me the person who just didn't seem to fit in with the club was the CEO, he justed didn't come across as a football person, and I got the feeling he had a superficial so-called affection for the club. It certainly gave me the feeling that to a large degree the problems were at a high level than the manager.
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Yep he liked to use the expression ‘fundamental changes may need to be made’, whilst based on the combined personalities of him and Grayson I would have thought that the most beneficial fundamental change would have been to have got rid of him. I binge watched the full series and loved it, I’m hoping they do another series st the end of this season.
 
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