Off the field operations

Can you paste the words on here please mate? The work firewall doesn't like that website.

 

Just for you!

doragon sports

Sunderland AFC: The Resilient Return – A European Dream in Red and White

For years Sunderland AFC were a cautionary tale, not an inspiration. A proud club turned tragic documentary. A name whispered with pity and pain. Yet in the autumn of 2025, something has shifted on Wearside. The fear has gone. The self-doubt has burned off like morning fog. What remains is a football club that has remembered what it feels like to matter.
The numbers are simple but staggering. Ten matches into the Premier League season, Sunderland sit fourth. Eighteen points. Five wins, three draws, two losses. Twelve goals scored, eight conceded. The balance of adventure and control is almost mathematical, but what truly defines this team is their humanity. They fight, they break, they heal, and they fight again.

For a club that has spent almost a decade clawing its way out of the shadows, the sight of the red and white stripes in the upper reaches of the table feels like a waking dream. And if the current Sunderland scoreline each weekend keeps looking this good, there is no reason to believe that the dream has to end.

The Fortress on the Wear
The Stadium of Light has not sounded like this since the early 2000s. The crowd no longer groans at every misplaced pass. They roar. They sing. They believe. The team gives them reason.

The season began with a 3–0 win over West Ham United that felt like a release of ten years of frustration. Eliezer Mayenda opened his Premier League account, Daniel Ballard added another, and Wilson Isidor sealed it late. The scoreline did more than shock the pundits. It told the supporters that Sunderland were not here to make up the numbers.

Then came Brentford, a match that seemed destined for heartbreak until Enzo Le Fée equalised from the penalty spot in the eighty-second minute. What followed was delirium. A long Granit Xhaka cross found Wilson Isidor in the ninety-sixth minute, and the Frenchman’s header sent the Stadium of Light into orbit. Two home matches, six points, one reawakened city.

October brought another victory. Wolverhampton Wanderers came to Wearside and left silent. Nordi Mukiele struck early, an own goal arrived late, and Sunderland had ten points from a possible twelve at home. They had turned the stadium into a place of noise and defiance again. Even the Sunderland weather, grey and wet and sharp on the wind, felt alive in the floodlights.

Away From Home – The Grit of Belief
The mark of real progress is not what happens under your own roof. It is what happens when the odds and the crowd are against you.

At Nottingham Forest, Sunderland played like a side who had read the script and decided to tear it up. Only thirty-five percent possession, yet they won one nil through Omar Alderete’s header. It was not beautiful football, but it was disciplined and hungry.

Then came Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, a night that might end up defining the season. They went behind early, but Wilson Isidor equalised through a long throw routine that would make an analytics department blush. And when the match seemed to be fading, substitute Chemsdine Talbi sprinted through on the counter and finished coolly in the ninety-third minute. Two one. Sunderland had beaten Chelsea in London.

They are now unbeaten in their last fourteen league matches in the capital. That is not a coincidence. It is an attitude. A refusal to bend.

Brains, Bruises and a Captain Who Knows Both
At the centre of it all is Granit Xhaka, the heartbeat and the conscience. He was brought in to lead, and he does it without theatrics. Everything Sunderland do with the ball runs through him. He wins it, moves it, demands it back. He sees passes before they exist. His presence alone brings calm to the chaos.

Beside him, Enzo Le Fée brings the creativity. Ahead of them, Wilson Isidor brings the pain. His goals have changed the mood of matches, his timing almost supernatural. Behind them, Omar Alderete and Robin Roefs bring the silence that every good defence needs. Roefs, still young, has made saves that defy logic. At Palace, he stopped everything. At Forest, he played as if time slowed for him.

The squad is tall, physical, pragmatic, but not cynical. They understand how to hurt teams without losing their rhythm. Their set pieces are calculated, rehearsed, perfected. They train corners like orchestras rehearse crescendos. Sunderland are no longer a team hoping for luck. They create their own.

A Calculated Madness
Régis Le Bris does not behave like a newly promoted coach. He behaves like someone who has already seen the ending and is calmly steering the ship toward it. His use of the 4-3-3, occasionally morphing into a compact 5-4-1, is the mark of a manager who studies patterns like a scientist studies stars.

He builds games like a radiogoniometer builds coordinates, reading invisible lines, adjusting positioning, finding signals in the noise. His Sunderland side play with patience that feels foreign to promoted clubs. They trust their shape. They wait for the small openings. When they come, they strike.

Four clean sheets in ten matches. One of the lowest xGA records in the league. And the stat that sums them up best: eight points rescued from losing positions. No one in the division has recovered more. Sunderland do not wilt. They metabolise pressure.

The European Question
Nobody wants to say it out loud, but everyone is thinking it. Sunderland are not just safe. They are in contention.

It is early November and they sit fourth, a Champions League qualification position. The numbers are real. The performances are not flukes. They have already beaten established sides. They have scored late winners, defended under siege, and built the kind of momentum that turns months into myths.

It would be foolish to declare them European certainties, but it would be dishonest to dismiss the idea entirely. The results have been too fruitful, the structure too sound, the chemistry too visible.

Even Le Bris admits that some supporters might forget they are a promoted team. He still insists that forty points remain the target, but the glint in his eyes betrays the truth. He knows that this team is capable of more.

Should they finish where they are, Sunderland would qualify for Europe for the first time in modern memory. And if that happens, the city will explode into red and white light.

Echoes of Continental Nights
The last time Sunderland flirted with international competition, it was through summer friendlies and forgotten tournaments.

In 2013, they travelled to Hong Kong for the Premier League Asia Trophy. They beat Tottenham Hotspur three one in the semi-final, then lost narrowly to Manchester City in the final. It was not an official European competition, but it was a reminder of what Sunderland looked like under foreign skies.

Before that, the 1990s brought the Anglo Italian Cup, a short-lived and slightly chaotic tournament that paired English and Italian clubs from the second tier. Sunderland took part in 1993–94, chasing continental glamour in an age before money ruled everything. It was a curious, nostalgic chapter. Italian sides like Brescia and Cosenza met English sides that played on uneven pitches under flickering floodlights. Sunderland never won it, but they belonged to it in spirit.

For the new generation, Europe has become a dream retold rather than a memory. The supporters who remember the Anglo Italian Cup are the same ones who now bring their children to the Stadium of Light, telling stories about what it meant to hear foreign anthems and accents against the hum of Wearside wind.

Now, that dream is starting to sound less like nostalgia and more like prophecy.

Where the Light Burns Brightest
Sunderland’s rise is not magic. It is work. It is sweat. It is the hum of drills on the training ground, the repetition of passes, the invisible chemistry of teammates who trust each other completely. It is also a city rediscovering joy.

People queue outside the Sunderland AFC shop with smiles again. The clatter of pint glasses near the river is louder after wins. Even the streets around the ground feel sharper, as if the weather itself wants to join in. Sunderland AFC tickets are selling faster than anyone expected. The hope that used to weigh heavy now floats.

They have not changed who they are. They have remembered it.g great

A Club Reborn
Sunderland AFC are sailing into uncharted water, but they are not afraid. The football is smart, brave and physical. The supporters have reawakened. The stadium feels like a living organ.

They could still stumble. Injuries, form, fatigue, the brutal rhythm of the Premier League can humble anyone. But right now, Sunderland are part of the conversation again. They are proof that a club can climb back from ridicule and rebuild its soul.

The radiogoniometer still hums quietly in Le Bris’ mind. The coordinates are being drawn. Europe is no longer a distant star. It is a visible constellation.

And on Wearside, under the cold November rain, the old light burns brighter than ever.

 

Appreciated!

Edit - Half way through reading and it is a beautiful article. Full of emotive language, superlatives yet also pretty accurate with the facts. Nice to see good writers are taking notice of us

 

That is a hell of an article.

One line sums it up for me - They have not changed who they are. They have remembered it

As a famous man once said "I didn’t bring the magic, it’s always been here. I just came back to find it."

 

Brilliant.

 

How Sunderland's 'perfect storm' got them dreaming of top 10 and trophies

 

With the club flying high in the Premier League, it is suddenly “international brands” who are showing interest in partnering with the Black Cats rather than the national or even local firms they’ve chosen from in recent years.

The club are understood to be seeking a “partner” in the same mould as Hummel, the Danish kit brand who have come good on their promise to give Sunderland the “Rolls Royce treatment”.

From being an afterthought with Nike, they are now among the top 10 kit sellers in the entire country, with a portfolio of strips that nod to the club’s heritage and reflect aspects of the city and fanbase.

The response from fans has been overwhelmingly positive – kit sales are 100,000 and counting. A new way of doing things seems to be reaping rewards.

 

It was a bold plan and one that will pay off for transfer windows to come. With a net spend of just over £100m – the gross spend was around £130m, less than widely reported at the time – they have plenty of headroom to continue investing because that outlay is amortised over the length of the contracts of the new signings.

Indeed Leeds managing director Robbie Evans recently claimed the Black Cats had the “highest so-called cap room in the history of PSR”, suggesting the club’s policy had created a “perfect storm”.

It’s a view shared on Wearside, where there was a conscious decision to be disciplined on wages in recent years. Sources also suggest they “won’t be afraid” of further big sales down the line, with player trading remaining a big part of the business model of a club who sold Jobe Bellingham and Tom Watson to Borussia Dortmund and Brighton respectively this summer.

 

That also makes for tremendous reading. Thanks for posting.

 

wonder who the international player is

 

I read it as an highly regarded international player who is already here. Now you've got me wondering if it's with the January window in mind.

 

I was laughing about the cages and the wind chat from him while watching it, thinking ****ing hell for a multi-millionaire ex-footballer he is quite eaily impressed.

Then I read the comments on the video one said "poor lads got PTSD from the wind"

 

Going by their recent 'love in' with the club by thousands of their countrymen, Mexico wouldn't be a bad choice mate.

 

Interview with Dan Ballard

https://www.sunderlandecho.com/spor...s6RrQ1cdFKGBtsIsLf_aem_MJLAKlJWjpPIT7mLjT946Q