Last season saw Sunderland exit the top flight with a whimper, something they’ve done more than once before throughout the Premier League’s 25-year history. But that hasn’t been always the case; in the four seasons prior to their eventual relegation, the Black Cats finished no higher than 14th and no lower than 17th in a seemingly eternal battle for top-flight survival.
Whilst each season contained its own unique tales of last-gasp heroics and defiance, to the ever-looping soundtrack of The Great Escape whistled by an army of Mackems, the 2013/14 edition particularly sticks out in the memory – immortalised by four words from then-manager Gus Poyet.
Eight points adrift of safety with just seven games of the season, Poyet summed up Sunderland’s chances of avoiding the drop after a humiliating 5-1 defeat at the hands of Tottenham Hotspur. Still trying to overcome the shellshock of a loss that had seen the Black Cats completely capitulate to concede four goals in the last half hour, Poyet turned to the reporter and said, quite simply, “we need a miracle.”
The beauty of football, however, is that miracles do happen – especially in the ever-unpredictable Premier League; Leicester City’s title win, West Brom and Portsmouth’s great escapes – the list goes on. And Sunderland’s induction into the Premier League’s miracle club owes much to one, incredibly unlikely source – a then newly-turned 21-year-old Connor Wickham.
Of course, it wasn’t just Sunderland’s disastrous season to that point which committed Poyet to making a plea to the footballing gods, but also the raft of seemingly insurmountable opponents they faced during the final run-in – two title contenders in Manchester City and Chelsea, both away from home, as well as Manchester United at Old Trafford and fellow relegation scrappers Cardiff City.
Sunderland would have to beat pretty much all of them to stand any chance of rising from the bottom of the table to the right side of the relegation line in time for the season’s close. Evidence so far that term suggested such a turnaround was far beyond their capabilities.
Sunderland lost their next game as well, a 1-0 defeat to Everton at home, to fall ten points away from safety. But that loss at least showed some signs of improvement; the Black Cats finished up with 24 efforts at goal, four more than the visitors, and were only undone by a 75th-minute Wes Brown own goal. There were impressive individual performances in many areas of the pitch, particularly in the final third where Adam Johnson, Fabio Borini and Wickham had all created chances for each other and peppered the Toffees’ goal.
Although Sunderland couldn’t take confidence from the result, the performance gave cause to be positive. And that was the exact mindset the Wearsiders took into their next game at the Eithad Stadium, even after going down to a Fernandinho goal in just the second minute. At that point, City had almost a perfect record at home – 14 wins from 15 games, the other being a 1-0 defeat to title rivals Chelsea.
But as the pressure began to unexpectedly build on the home side, Wickham, who had been deemed so insignificant at the start of the campaign that he had spent the vast majority of it on loan with Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds United in the Championship, suddenly sprung into life. Midway through the second half, the space of ten minutes saw him latch onto a Borini cross to head home from point-blank range, followed up by a powerful, drilled finish into the near post – the sheer velocity of which gave Joe Hart no time to react.
Sunderland couldn’t hold on at the Etihad, despite boasting the lead with just five minutes left on the clock, eventually coming away with just one point in a 2-2 draw. But Sunderland had travelled to the home of the future Premier League champions and more than held their own – in fact, they completely outplayed them for large periods and were unlucky not to claim the win. The miracle, headed by Wickham’s sudden netting prowess, was well and truly underway.
The next for games saw Poyet receive exactly what he’d begged for. Sunderland won all four, beating Chelsea with a late Borini winner and Manchester United with one of the most resilient performances of the season at Old Trafford, finishing up with just 37% possession and just one shot on target – an effort from Seb Larsson that proved to be the difference at the final whistle. There was also the not so small matter of a 4-0 demolition job on relegation rivals Cardiff City – essentially compelling the Bluebirds to the Championship.
In the process of that final seven-games run, Wickham produced five goals, nearly half of all the eleven top-flight strikes he mustered up over four years at the Stadium of Light and exactly an eighth of all the league goals he’s managed throughout a career that has seen him make 195 appearances in the first and second tiers. A miraculous run of form from a largely average striker who can’t even get a game at Crystal Palace these days.
Of course, other players were vital in that run too; John O’Shea always seemed to make Sunderland more organised at the back, even if his individual performances weren’t particularly exceptional, Seb Larsson enjoyed a rare glimmer of consistent form and in addition to Wickham, Johnson and Borini had made themselves genuinely dangerous threats in the final third. For whatever reason, the ball seemed to find them that little bit more during the final seven games of the campaign.
And yet, during a point in which Sunderland were the Premier League’s second-lowest scorers after Norwich City, it was Wickham’s goals that made all the difference. Contrasting sharply with the rest of his career, he was not a one-season wonder so much as a seven-game wonder – a run during which the Englishman was practically unplayable and every shot seemed unstoppable.
Sunderland have hung onto their top flight status by the skin of their teeth before and probably will do so again at future points in the Premier League era, but none of their great escapes have or will hinge on the pop-up-shop netting prowess of a 21-year-old striker who previously had just one top flight goal under his belt in quite the same way.
Poyet asked the footballing gods for a miracle and for whatever reason, they elected Wickham as the unsuspecting vessel to deliver it.