Look at the quality of the goals and the passion at a full Sol. We were close to achieving a very good team in this era. If only Murray had the funds to have been able to add to the squad. Fast forward 18 years. Its so depressing of what we have now become.
Loved it - but he apparently had the funds just wasn't willing to invest according to Reidy on the radio. Said he knew that money was available but the chairman dug his heels in and wouldn't spend it. How different things could've been
Golden Goals: Niall Quinn and Kevin Phillips for Sunderland v Chelsea (1999) Niall Quinn recalls his brilliant strike partnership with Kevin Phillips.. You had a great time at Sunderland. Was that period from around 1998-2001, when you were promoted to the Premier League and finished seventh in consecutive seasons, the best of your career? Yeah, it was a pleasure to be playing football at that time. Each game was a joy. It was far more valuable because I was in my thirties and knew time was running out. We were in the top half of the table, there was no pressure of relegation and we had a fella who was liable to score 30 goals in Kevin Phillips. That’s the holy grail for every team. I had my career extended because I was playing alongside him and he was gobbling up any opportunities whether they came via me, Nicky Summerbee, Allan Johnston or whoever. You were promoted in 1999 but then Chelsea thrashed you 4-0 on the first day of the season. What do you remember about that game? They belittled us really. They were magnificent. Bobby Saxton, our assistant manager, did a Phil Brown – he had us on the pitch, not at half-time but after the game. We all got changed and he brought us all out into the centre-circle when the ground was empty. We sat down and had a very important team talk. It was insightful, meaningful and we didn’t go away feeling sorry for ourselves; we left it there on the pitch. By the time the reverse fixture came around in December we were so up for it. And you were 4-0 up after 39 minutes, with some brilliant goals … Yeah, nobody could believe it. Kev and I really had to be at our best because we were up against Marcel Desailly, who had won the World Cup 18 months earlier. I think what we’re most pleased about isn’t that we both scored two or that we won 4-1; it’s that Desailly went off at half-time and played the next match three days later, which told us he wanted to get out of town. That was the biggest compliment he could have paid us. You finished seventh in consecutive seasons, yet it might have been ever better. Yeah, both seasons we were third on Boxing Day and had tough games out of the way. We had great belief in the team but we always got tired after Christmas. The buzz didn’t last the full season, unlike Leicester last year. Why do you think that was? I don’t know. It might have helped if we had better rotation. To finish high up the league you need 22 top players, which we didn’t have. We had a team that worked fairly rigidly. We fancied ourselves when we had Summerbee and Johnston on the wings and Kev and I up front, but if one of us got injured it upset the whole thing. Ultimately I was getting old too, and as the season wore on I wasn’t at my best. But there’s no real regrets because we achieved as much as we could. I always think Summerbee and Johnston deserve a mention because we were spoilt rotten with the quality and the ability those guys had. It’s an art that isn’t as prevalent anymore but they were two of the finest crossers of the ball I’ve ever had the pleasure to train and work with. Kevin Phillips is still the only Englishman to win the European Golden Shoe with his 30 league goals in 1999-2000. Is he a great advert for not having too much too soon in football?Absolutely. When he came in the door none of us knew anything about him. He wasn’t even a makeweight – Peter Reid has admitted that he wanted to sign David Connolly. All I’d read is that he had stacked shelves but he walked in and brought this indomitable spirit. He just wanted to achieve. He scored on his debut and it was like seeing a greyhound out of the traps. He was great fun to be around, a terrific guy and a terrific friend. I don’t speak to him often but I have nothing but great memories from my time with him and his family. I just hope one day he gets old and stiff and I’ll be able to beat him at golf. He scored some great goals, including a screamer when you battered Chelsea... He scored every kind of goal. He scored volleys from outside the box; he scored a lot of headers; he could delicately pass it into the corner out of the reach of the keeper, then when it was on his left foot he could blast it. His favourite one was to bend it in the top-right corner. He’d put it three or four yards outside the post and bring it back, so the keeper thought it was going wide and suddenly it would end up in the top corner. Once he got the ball out of his feet and on the move his accuracy was frightening really. There wasn’t a goal he couldn’t score. It was a great time for north-east football because as well as Kev you had players like [Alan] Shearer and [Fabrizio] Ravanelli scoring loads of goals. Did you work on your partnership with him? It was all natural. Anyone who trained with Kev would know he didn’t pass the ball so I always made sure I was on the other team in training. But when match day came around he understood his role. His reading of the game – which was pure instinct – was brilliant. He had an idea where things would end up and would always lose his man and get into dangerous areas. We only worked on one or two small things – like if I was going for a ball in the air I would always angle my body to head it inside, rather than flick it on straight or outside, because if he got on the end of it he would be nearer his shooting position. That was all we spoke about. We’d say “inside” quite a lot to each other on the pitch. Did you practise your heading? I always practised my heading even though I was good at it. It was more about timing and the flight of the ball, which a lot of people don’t read that well. The second the ball left the goalkeeper’s foot I knew where it was going to be at its maximum point that I could head it. Before every game, while everyone else was running around cones and doing fancy little dances with ladders and ropes, I would get the goalkeeper to take half a dozen kick-outs so I knew exactly where it was going. With your height, did you feel unplayable at times? I think I knew an awful lot more later in my career about how to get an advantage. When I was young, I was naive. I ran around too much, I tried to do things way too early in the buildup, I wasn’t as strong physically and I didn’t have the brain power that I had later in my career. And then obviously my touch developed because I played head-tennis every day … How does head-tennis improve your touch? We call it head-tennis but foot-tennis is probably a better description. Imagine Wimbledon with the court being half the size but the net being the same. You have two vs two and you get two touches each before the ball has to go to the other side. We played for a fiver or a tenner in those days, that was enough to get people warmed up and wanting to win. I’m not sure it’d be enough these days but I’d implore any young kid who’s got athletic ability, can shoot or score goals but needs to work on his touch, to play head-tennis. We weren’t heading to the big places in London; we were happy in Seaham playing shove ha’penny at three in the morning When did you start playing that? The first time I played was when I joined Manchester City. It was me and Peter Reid against the doctor and the physio – and they beat us, because I was hopeless. Peter Reid was disgusted. I’d been at the club a day and I was a big signing. You can imagine what the rest of the dressing room said. So I made it my business to improve and I’m still quite proud of that. I played it every day after that and I’d like to think I was one of the best head-tennis players that Sunderland or Man City saw. You scored some superb lobs and chips in your career. Did it help with those? Absolutely. If somebody’s at the net you have to get it over their head and down, like in real tennis. I would have picked that skill up there for sure. Did you get enough credit for how good you were on the floor? I didn’t need people to say I was anything I wasn’t, and that’s not what drove me. It was nice was when people said, “You’re a bit better than we thought”, and that was as much as I was ever going to get. I always had a good feeling when somebody said that. Those head-tennis games must have been good for team spirit as well? Brilliant. And also you want pride; you don’t want your touch to look bad in front of your team-mates. It’s a bit like being a peacock; you want to show your colours. It was a great way of improving without coaches shouting at you. We had three fabulous tennis courts outside the dressing room at Sunderland’s training ground. I used to run leagues and all the players would join in, from the first team to the kids. Imagine doing something as enjoyable as that for your living every day. I’m still doing it. I turn 50 next month and I’ve got the lads down the village into it so that’s how it much it meant to me. I knew my time was up in 2002 when Howard Wilkinson walked in, saw us all playing head-tennis and very publicly ordered the groundsman to get rid of the tennis courts immediately. I was gone within a week. Nothing against Howard – everyone brings their own ideas into the club – but that was the end of my time at Sunderland. Peter Reid was the manager for most of your time there. What made him so good? He was a great motivator. We had a fairly simple system. He and his No 2, Bobby Saxton, had a way of playing that was drilled into the players – we bought into that, and we had someone who scored loads of goals. There are many parts to management but I think getting Kevin Phillips to come from Watford to Sunderland and turning him into somebody who won the European Golden Boot shows what Peter Reid can do in terms of getting the best out of people. A number of players would thank him for what he did for their careers – Paul Butler, Jody Craddock and many others. He left the club within 18 months of finishing seventh in 2000-01. What went wrong? I think that in trying to replace that team he bought B-list foreign players, and also maybe not enough of them had the spirit that had been driven into us. The big deals didn’t work out: Lilian Laslandes, Tore Andre Flo, there were quite a few. I’m not being critical of those players because I know what it’s like – some places work for you and some don’t. But Peter was great for me at Manchester City, where I blossomed as a player, and then at Sunderland for the last six years of my career. I’ll always be more then grateful to him. You had some great moments against Newcastle in that time as well, including your winning goal in 2000-01. That particular day I felt as good as at any time in my career. The derbies were great fun in those days. It was on the back of a similar win before in the August monsoon rain the previous season, which signalled the end of Ruud Gullit as Newcastle manager. To repeat the dose a year later was very special. Sir Bobby Robson was manager and they were heading for the Champions League. Alan Shearer had come again and it was an important game. I’d have it right up there with the Chelsea game. How would you celebrate wins like the ones against Newcastle or Chelsea? It was simpler than in today’s world, where the guys have cameraphones on their tail everywhere they go. There was a lad called Big Adie who was a good friend of ours – he was a big Sunderland fan and had a pub called the Phoenix in Seaham. So we had Phoenix nights, and usually we’d all be in the car park collecting our cars the next day after leaving them there the night before. That was never the plan but especially if we won we’d end up having a good night with the guys and the wives. It was a close-knit thing, we weren’t getting flights to London and heading to the big places; no we were happy enough in Seaham playing shove ha’penny at three o’clock in the morning. Has that side of team bonding been lost? I’m not sure it would be right to reintroduce anything like that but the tough thing for the modern players is it’s very hard to be part of your community. We were able to breeze in and out of the chip shop, breeze in and out of the pub and it was fine. You weren’t expected to be aloof. I sometimes get annoyed when I see players walk past fans wearing these big headphones. Give me my day any day – and I mean that. You could offer me 10 years earning all the money in the world, and with big headphones to cocoon myself, and I wouldn’t take it. I’m more than happy with the career I had.
I think the debt the club went into kind of disproves Reid's versions of events. Relegation and Flo almost bankrupted the club. Fact is then there was no money to be made from football back then if you wanted to spend big. You needed a sugar daddy. Murray was not that, we could never have afforded to take the next step that Reid wanted imo. We could have consolidated though but what he did have he didn't spend well and that 7m on Flo was a lot of money then in relation to a clubs turnover.
