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00:00Sunderland don't normally have good things.
00:05Good things don't happen to us.
00:08The Black Canceler has finally run out.
00:12The back-to-back relegations.
00:15My kind of lowest point is a football club.
00:17This is extraordinary.
00:19Sunderland are relegated to League One.
00:22It was a really difficult time to be at the club.
00:25Sunderland's gone too far and it needs rebuilding.
00:27There's very few projects like a Sunderland
00:31where you can start where we started and get to where we got to.
00:34The misery in League One is coming back.
00:37You just couldn't wait, really.
00:39It was just pure madness.
00:41The Black Cats return to the Premier League
00:45after eight years away.
00:48It's been a hell of a journey.
00:50We've got to make sure that we stay
00:52and then we grow and we push on,
00:54like we've done in every league.
00:56Come on then.
01:03Honestly, I love pre-season. It's a really good time to come together.
01:05Honestly, I love pre-season, it's a really good time to come together.
01:18I think this is number eight for me here and you know what I've learned from pre-seasons
01:25it's players come in, players change, the group dynamics shift a little bit, players
01:31just come together.
01:35Getting to know people is probably single-handedly the most important thing because you know
01:39as we are footballers but behind that is the human being.
01:49I think these trips are good for you know integrating new lads and you know playing little games
01:55and you know getting to know their personality, getting to kind of get them to bring their
01:59personality out into the group.
02:03When you spend time together the full day you create conditions for conversation, to play
02:10golf, to play football because obviously it's the main part of the camp.
02:17It is a fun trip away but there's also a lot of hard work, you know it's absolutely boiling
02:31out here for a start.
02:36You know double sessions most days you know it keeps us switched on and you know the intensity
02:43of training has been really good out here which is a massive positive for the group.
02:49We've signed some more young players in this transfer window for the Premier League and
02:53I think they have chosen to come to us because they see the positives in coming into our environment
02:56and the success like players that have got similarities to them have had in the past so always looking
03:01for the right balance in the squad.
03:10We need to lift the level with specific profiles, a bit more experience, a bit more explosive for addition
03:19for the style of play and the efficiency of the squad.
03:23It's really expensive in the Premier League so the owner is totally involved and I think we are working well so far.
03:32I have a microphone.
03:34But I think that all the people who have joined this club and me too, we are people who have a good life and a good sense.
03:42So to be able to integrate with them, this has not been a very difficult thing because they have a very good conviviality.
03:55In terms of the football front, the way someone like Enzo for example raised the level of just the training.
04:02He's like an octopus, he's got like eight legs, the things that he can do.
04:07Oh I see you.
04:11Bro, I was really serious.
04:13Yeah?
04:13Yeah.
04:13You're never serious.
04:14Yeah, I was.
04:15Why are you so serious bro?
04:16I said to him, but for me it's, I think, the best person I've met in football.
04:22Oh brilliant, I've just found a bee swimming in my orange juice. Look at that.
04:25I won't be drinking that, will I? Do you want to save it?
04:26You might be having a good time for all, you know?
04:28There we are, save a bee. Like yeah, go on, I'm not going to drink that now am I?
04:31Look at that. Go on, revive the bee. There we go.
04:34That's your good deed for the day.
04:36Oh my god.
04:38Because Luke is the club captain and he does a lot for the club. He's been the essence league one.
04:44He's helped me on my journey in terms of taking on the captaincy. He's helped me kind of coming to
04:50the ranks from 60s to 80s to 21s.
04:58He has so much quality. He's a kind of simple, a worker, a worker, he's listening, he's nice.
05:08I sometimes find it amazing that I've found myself in this position. You know, from the kid that's just
05:18used to play football with his brother out in the street to find myself in these shoes, it's incredible.
05:28And I know how much this club means to everybody so I then never take each day for granted.
05:34The whole club, the whole city, just immense pride and loyalty. You know, we've had some great times,
05:44we've had some horrible times, but we've always had our football club. We've always, you know,
05:48worked hard during the week to go and support them. And you know, for the fans who've stuck by this side,
05:55we're now seeing, you know, good times. So yeah, it's just, to be honest, supporting this club,
06:00even though we've been through the mill, it's just happiness, best times of my life.
06:07I have to say, not just the Sunderland fans, but North East in general, in terms of football,
06:14it's a region that just lives and breathes it. You know, everywhere you go up there,
06:17you're either wearing a black and white shirt or a red and white shirt. So,
06:20you know, they are fanatical about their football teams.
06:27I started going in 92 and it was just used to being, you know, like in the doldrums of what was
06:34their first division, you know, kind of just surviving and stuff. And,
06:37you know, Peter Higg comes in.
06:39It's a massive club. It's up to us to get it right on the field.
06:45You drive into Sunderland and you come round this particular corner and bang, you know,
06:49there it is, the stadium, the light. And I was like, wow. I was like, surely that can't be the new
06:54ground. I was desperate to get started.
06:56Kevin Phillips, Niall Quinn, Lee Clark, Liggy Simon v Alan Johnson. We just had such a great
07:09side. You know, we could have gone up the first year. We had a young team, you know,
07:15we hadn't played together for very long. And, you know, that second season, we gelled,
07:19we come together and we absolutely romped the league. And then that first season back in the Premier League.
07:26A wonderful sense of optimism at this time of the football year. All the clubs starting equal.
07:34It's kind of like this year where everyone's wrote us off. And everyone did write us off then.
07:41Teasing the club from the north-east again. In goes, play it!
07:46Simply glorious!
07:50It's daunting, don't get me wrong. Especially when you get smashed 4-0 away at Chelsea
07:54first game of the season. I tell you what, even if we were played well, we'd have been,
07:59we'd have been, if we had our best, we couldn't contain them today. They were too strong for us all
08:03over. You think it's going to be a long, hard season, but you've got to, you've got to believe.
08:06Dick here. Phillips. Take him off. Scoring from here. Oh, yes he is!
08:15Kevin Phillips was a wonderful goal scorer, probably the best goal scorer we've ever had,
08:19or ever will have. He was incredible. And the fact that he scored, well, 30 goals.
08:25Him and Niall Quinn were the best two strikers in the league, probably in Europe,
08:29you know, because I think Hever probably was the first one to see when he scored as many goals
08:33without Quinnie nodding them down. I don't think anyone, you know, foresee that we could
08:40finish seventh in the Premier League. I knew I'd won the Premier League golden boot. I think I finished
08:46above Thierry Henry. I think I was six more than him in the Premier League. I didn't realise there was
08:51such a thing as a European golden shoe. What's that? Is it like something like Cinderella?
08:55To do it at a club like Sunderland, who, you know, is not your Arsenal, it's not your Manchester United's
09:03at the time, you know, it's not your Chelsea's. For me, I felt that was even more than an achievement
09:09than if it had done it at one of the huge football clubs. He was incredible and an absolute hero amongst
09:16men and he doesn't have to buy a pint and something any time he comes.
09:20I played under 22 managers in my career and everyone's got their own qualities. But I have
09:29to say it was Peter Reid was the best because his man management for me was excellent.
09:36It was a wonderful time to support this football club. It was like, how high can we go? And then it
09:43all came crashing back down again. People were moving on. Big Nile was moving on. You know,
10:02it's players that performed in those two seasons, you know, weren't performing again the same and I
10:08put myself in that bracket. It didn't end brilliantly for him because I think obviously the money had
10:14ran out and he kind of fallen out a little bit with Bob Merri. Eventually when you're just staying up,
10:21eventually you're going to fall through that trap door and we did.
10:25Was there a great feeling of relief almost when that final whistle went?
10:30Er, no. Embarrassment is a better word, I think. But expectation will be that we'll come straight back.
10:36But we're going to have to be a lot better than we were today to do that.
10:41During 2009, before I arrived, they'd had two or three promotions and relegations, so they're a bit
10:47up and down. I just remember my first conversation with Steve and the line I remember was him saying
10:53how he wanted to get 48,000 Maccams off the feet as quickly as possible in games and that stuck with me.
10:59I mean, Sunderland means pretty much everything. You know, I have a thing. I've been at the club since
11:07I was five, six-year-old. Heroes growing up, I think Lee Cattermore was captain of Sunderland.
11:12Cattermore's outstanding. The throwback for the 70s, I think. He loves a tackle.
11:20We recruited really strong Premier League players and big athletes and got right through the spine of
11:26the team with Michael Turner, Loret Canna, myself, Darren Bent, to add to what was already there.
11:30A really good squad.
11:32Threatening here from Sunderland, a little four for Bairns!
11:36The stadium of Ligerops!
11:39I think that the doom and gloom era was when we lost, Darren Bent was banging the goals in for us.
11:46And I just don't think we never signed anyone to replace him with those goals.
11:51The challenge every year for the eight years we stayed in the Premier League was to get safe.
11:56We just didn't really get a chance to build a sustainable model, which whatever reason that
12:02was, I don't know. It just ended up being a roundabout of, you know, we'll get a manager in,
12:09he'll get sacked by April, we'll bring another manager in, he'll keep us up. If you flirt with relegation
12:16so many times, eventually it'll come and bite you. And that's what happened with us.
12:19Ryan Fraser's rolling across! Sunderland have pulled off some extraordinary acts of escapology
12:26in the past, but now the Black Cats' luck has finally run out. They are relegated from the Premier League.
12:35With the back-to-back relegations, my kind of lowest, lowest point is a football club.
12:41This is extraordinary. Sunderland are relegated to League One.
12:46It was a really difficult time to be at the club, like, you know, obviously the ownership
12:51was changing, but then obviously on the back of relegations, you start losing members of staff.
12:55So I think we lost 50 or 60 staff at one point and then suddenly it's gone too far and it needs rebuilding.
12:59I came up here, you know, when the club was at one of its lowest points in League One,
13:17I think I was sitting 15th in League One at one point.
13:19I remember him coming and he was just doing so much. He was at the training ground all day.
13:27It was like he'd won a ticket to be there. He just loved the whole thing, which was great.
13:35Them seasons in League One were so important for us to be where we are now.
13:40That was where the foundations were set for the success of this club.
13:53When you've got nothing or when you're at the lowest point, that's where you've actually got to look inside
13:57and go like, right, what's not working? What is working? What do we need to double down on?
14:01What do we need to change? And you do that enough, then the club individuals just get better and better and better.
14:07What do we need to do? What do we need to do? What do we need to do? What do we need to do?
14:11What do we need to do? What do we need to do? What do we need to do?
14:13There was definitely a renewed optimism, which you could feel and obviously we're winning games.
14:19And yeah, there's some younger players coming through and yeah, you could definitely feel that we were going to be competitive.
14:26There was success rather than like we'd hit the bottom and I felt it was always going to go forward.
14:30Josh Cullen, he's ducked the cross out.
14:33When we lost in League One in the playoffs, it's not just a failure of the season.
14:52We failed on one of the goals, but the club still moved forward.
14:55We were always known as the graveyard for the, you know, the retirees and that changed when Christian
15:03Speakman came in and he said he wanted to sign young players who wanted to play for the badge and improve themselves.
15:08I came in December 2020, just shortly before Kirill took ownership of the football club.
15:18It was well documented where Sunderland was and the journey it had been on.
15:21But I think, you know, there's very few projects like a Sunderland where you can start where we started and get to where we got to.
15:27I think they're, they're once in a lifetime opportunities.
15:30They've been massive.
15:31They tried to give the players everything we need in order to be successful.
15:34They formed a game model and an idea of this is how we want to look like.
15:47The League One situation, I think, is that is the hardest.
15:49And I think it's out of all the hurdles we've had to jump has been the most difficult because of what Sunderland is in League One.
15:55I always say I wanted to get out of League One as fast as we could.
16:15The promotion season, it was amazing.
16:20I think it was just beautiful, just the way it ended and the lads got their just rewards, which is the thing I was most proud of.
16:25These are the men who will be spoken about for years as the men who brought the colossus of a club, which is Sunderland, alive again.
16:39I think the transition between the leagues is really difficult and there's always going to be nuances to the new league.
16:45We had it from League One to the Championship.
16:46Second season of the Championship we didn't, it wasn't good enough from January onwards.
16:56I think a lot of people, including ourselves, really probably wrote ourselves off after finishing 16th, 17th, whatever it was.
17:03The team was just struggling, I think the fans were sick, the team looked sick, you know, we needed a rebrand.
17:13Come on Dan, we start with a passing drill, just a reminder about the passing drill.
17:18Three main orders, turn means you can turn, bounce, pressure behind your teammates and time.
17:31I was in the right place at the right moment. My skills as a manager, I connected, I think, perfectly with the expectations of the club and the group at that moment.
17:45From the minute he came in in pre-season, he set foundations in and out of position that were very kind of easy to kind of understand, but still very effective.
18:03Take care of the ball, take care of the ball.
18:07And he just built individuals, players, human beings, just to be better. Not just players, like human beings as well, which I think is just as important.
18:15I think calmness is a massive quality. I think because we're such a young team, I think the fact that he's very flatlined in terms of his emotion helps us.
18:30Intensity. It's a normal game. We want to win. Talk, project, clear. Is that OK?
18:38As a manager, we always have to be aware about the identity of the club.
18:45Let's see what's the best.
18:46Regs shoots, it takes another deflection and it's here.
18:53Luke O'Neill!
18:56I like every style of football, but at the end you need to win. So it's probably the most important thing at the end.
19:02Lefeuille, fingers around the shot.
19:04Oh, it was great!
19:06He made that look so easy, but it was brilliant!
19:09Last year, I dreamed of being able to put Sunderland where he should be in the Premier League.
19:39I think a lot of the lads love the golf days. We play quite a bit on our days off back home, so we were gagging for a little bit of a golf afternoon, a little afternoon off, and we got it and we enjoyed it, although it was absolutely boiling, so we were struggling for the last few holes.
20:05Teams with new managers, especially us, I think we went unbeaten for a good five, six games, so that was always helpful and then you get towards the end and you slow down a bit.
20:18We actually came here. Well, not here, but we came to Portugal.
20:23We played this course, yeah, after we lost five in a row. I think it was all a bit doom and gloom, but we just came here, had a bit of fun.
20:30We just got away from England and got that confidence back again.
20:37I think it was important because the mood is always affected by bad results, so we changed the environment and it helped a lot.
20:48I think that when we got Coventry on the last day, there was a bit of negativity surrounding it because of our record against Coventry and we'd just got beat 3-0 a few months previously at their place.
20:59But to be honest, I think it was a good thing we got Coventry because it kind of switched the lads on even more.
21:04I think the playoff campaign that's just gone by honestly was, footballing wise, it's the most special few weeks that I've ever experienced. It was phenomenal.
21:21He's given to Eliza Mayenda! It's Eliza Mayenda for Sunderland! Scores!
21:33Eliza popped up with a goal at the end. I think when they scored at our place quite late on, you know, we worked so hard to keep them out for most of the game and they scored.
21:43But I think, again, that shows the character of the squad and the togetherness that we've got, you know, to be able to fight back in them circumstances.
21:51I get goosebumps still thinking about that extra time goal because that was the greatest moment I have ever seen at the stadium.
22:13From the outside, sometimes then games define us a little bit. And rightly or wrongly, I don't know.
22:23It does though. People are like, oh wow, how good was he this season? If you lose, I've been there, you just get dismissed.
22:30It wasn't impressive from a football perspective. I think it's fair to say that. But about the connection of the players, the energy and the willingness to win, we were the best.
22:49What do we want to achieve? Promotions. Promotions. So the most important game now is on Saturday. Be prepared for Wembley. OK? Enjoy!
23:04Sunderland take on Sheffield United in the Championship Play-Off Final.
23:10It was an amazing feeling, I mean, to lead the boys out on the day.
23:15One of the best days of my life.
23:21Ball given away to Gus Harbour, headed towards goal by Kiefer Moore, clawed off the line by Paterson.
23:26I don't know what Wembley's doing, I think he's desiccating his shoulders.
23:29Worse feeling in the world doing that and obviously two minutes into a game.
23:34You know, I think in my head I made peace with it.
23:38In a weird way of saying, listen, it's the price I had to pay to get promotion.
23:42What am I breaking for Tommy Watson?
23:52Sunderland attacking! Tommy Watson!
23:54Oh! My God! Tommy Watson!
24:00Tommy! Tommy Watson!
24:02Tommy Watson, what a way to kind of leave the club with the last kick of a football,
24:08taking them all back to the Premier League.
24:11Can you write that? I don't think you can.
24:13Absolutely amazing.
24:15I was crying my eyes out.
24:16First time I've ever cried happy tears at Wembley, so that was good.
24:19You just couldn't write it really. It was just three weeks of pure madness.
24:30To leave the boys out on the day and, you know, making that walk up Wembley steps
24:36and walking back down with the trophy is something that I'll never forget.
24:40Do you know what? I still can't believe it. The Premier League is something as a kid,
24:48I'm like, yeah, I'm going to get to the Premier League, I'm going to get to the Premier League,
24:50I really want to play Premier League and it's always been there.
24:53It's been a hell of a journey and we've got to make sure that that's been a seven, eight year journey.
24:57Seven, eight years from now we're not the exact same team, we're not the exact same players.
25:01We've got to be miles better.
25:05I think it's going to be a really fun season to see what we can potentially achieve in the Premier League
25:11and, you know, I know all the boys are going to give it the absolute best shot.
25:18I enjoyed every second of the last season and I hope it will be the case the next season.
25:22The Premier League is the best league in the world.
25:25We know that the gap will be really important, will be huge,
25:28but at the same time we want to keep our identity and I think we'll try to be competitive.
25:37But yeah, it's obvious I'm looking forward to the Derbys as a Sunderland fan.
25:45Hi, I'm Rebecca Lowe and as we head towards the end of an exciting Premier League season,
25:49make sure you like and subscribe on the NBC Sports YouTube channel for more content like this.