Merry Christmas Eve for those of us who celebrate that sort of thing. Me, I’m donning the red and white cap and wrapping presents. Then I’ll probably spend the rest of the day watching Netflix. That’s what I did yesterday when I spent about 6 hours watching Sunderland Till I Die, the documentary on Sunderland AFC’s 2017/18 League Championship campaign.
Spoiler Alert: there will be spoilers ahead.
Things I loved: the fans, the stadium, the matches without commentary where you can hear the fans breathing life into the games – sighing with relief after a save, agonizing over goals allowed, delighted when they score.
Things I didn’t like: I find that these mini-series, which are all the rage now, are either intentionally too long so as to increase your “amount of time on site” or all of the world’s editors died in a freak accident 10 years ago and no one noticed. With a good editor this could have been a 90 minute film. Or maybe a two part series, 3 hours max. It ran nearly six hours which was far too long to tell the story of a season.
The beauty of the film is the football and the fans. Set in Sunderland, it could be a documentary about any set of supporters, really. We have all seen that pre-match giddiness, the post-match depression, the season-long frustration, and end-of season anger. That is the agony of the football fan. Though, after two successive relegations (SPOILER!) the Black Cats might feel it a bit more than most.
But while the beauty is the game and the supporters, the real genius of this series is in the back-room scenes. We are introduced to then CEO Martin Bains almost immediately. He’s driving his Range Rover, sipping his cappuccinos, and talking about getting in the right players. Guys who are Sunderland through and through, guys who will walk through walls for the club. Then he outlines the major problem: that the then owner, Ellis Short, is trying to sell the club and after spending £150m in failed transfers, doesn’t want to sink any more money in. So, these players have to walk through walls for Sunderland, but do it on a budget.
Of all of the lessons learned, this is the one that was most stark: that at all levels of the club, they failed to recognize talent. From the owner appointing the CEO – who wasn’t great at any aspect of his job – to the CEO appointing the manager – who was fired after just a few weeks in the job – to the managers, coaches, and scouts failing to develop or find talent.
The clearest example was the now-infamous “transfer meeting” episode. The CEO holds a meeting with his scouts, in which they are supposed to present to him a list of players that he could go out and get (Ainsley Maitland-Niles topped their list BTW). About 5 minutes into the meeting, he turns on them. He starts asking if they know whether the player wants to come to Sunderland and then, there at the bottom of the list is the name Ibrahimovic.
I can’t tell if that was a pisstake or not. Like did the scouts really put Zlatan’s name on there? So, Martin Bain then says something like “so you’ve assembled this list without any knowledge of the budget and without knowing whether these players would come to Sunderland?”
Why on earth would you hold a meeting like that, as a CEO, without first telling the scouts the criteria and budget available? That scene epitomized the management of the club; there was a lack of communication, organization, and just a sort of general inability at many levels.
This film should be required viewing by all fans because it’s a warning that no matter how big your club (they have a 50,000 seat arena) and no matter how much money the owners put into the club out of pocket, your club will still fail if you have mediocre people in management.
I don’t think that any of the management folks were bad people. Martin Bain seemed to work hard and almost everyone involved cares about the club and wants to win. But just like the coal pits, just like the shipbuilding industries, football is changing and Sunderland it seems were once again left behind.
They were looking for players with “pashun” instead of talent and you can sort of see why. They had so many players on the books who were just there to collect a paycheck: Jack Rodwell is the villain of the piece but Darron Gibson is cut after several drunken mistakes and Didier N’Dong – the club’s record transfer – played just 16 matches in the Championship and then refused to show up for training the next season.
Meanwhile, Lee Cattermole is a fan favorite because he gives everything for his team, but you watch him run and pass for five minutes and you can see he’s not even remotely at Championship level much less good enough to earn his team promotion back to the Premier League. This wild belief that they could just get promoted back to the top division by just being more passionate than anyone else was found out in the hardest possible fashion: with relegation to the third division of English football.
In the end, what they needed was a good, old fashioned clear out and that’s what they got. Ellis Short is vilified by the fans in the series but he rescued them from Niall Quinn back in 2006, put a ton of his own money in, and when he sold the club, he cleared out all of Sunderland’s debts, giving them a clean sheet to start over. Even if he wasn’t the most competent owner at least he didn’t bankrupt the club. They also fired Martin Bain which was probably well deserved. And they promoted a brilliant 19 year old academy player to starting striker, Josh Maja, and he’s already their top scorer this season with 12 goals.
In the end, we don’t see any of this. The series concludes on the final day of the season. But the post-series Sunderland is a testament to how these clubs endure. Sunderland have dropped two levels below the top. Their stadium is empty a lot of the time on match day. But they rebuild, they keep going. And in 4th place, they may even win promotion back to the Championship this season.
Just to help with your facts. Club are averaging 30000+ for league one and will have around 45000 on Boxing Day. Not what I would call an empty stadium. Support is a different class .
You’re right, home average this season in 29,991 and 30,000 home fans is great for EFL and I meant no slight on the fans. But you have to admit that 30/49,000 leaves 19,000 empty seats which is a ton of empty seats and that’s certainly what the film’s director’s chose to show, perhaps even heightening the empty seats by showing home FA cup matches and the like which will be even more sparsely attended.
My point here was that even a big stadium with excellent support can end up nearly half empty through mismanagement. Should have made that clearer, apologies.
Anyway, I hope Sunderland get back up to the Championship. Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas Tim. Or to join in the general sentiment in goonerland, Emery Christmas. You spoil us. With unique, thoughtful, analytical comment that cost you to produce, but costs us nothing to consume.
Thank you.
Merry Christmas everyone. And I mean everyone. Even those I’ve made some late, studs-up tackles on. And whom I’ve been scythed down by 🙂 This is a unique community .
Mine’s being spent in Canada, in a Manchester City supporting household. I still love ’em.
Well written.
Wasn’t planning to see to this at all, having just finished “Peaky Blinders” latest season and engrossed “The First” but now I have to.
We are having turkey tomorrow after a two year hiatus doing cedar planked salmon. Is going from salmon back to turkey promotion or relaxation?
To all who celebrate the season, be well. To everyone else, be well.
Relegation not relation. Christmas dinner is not remotely relaxing at least to me.
Merry Christmas to all.
Santa, I been okay this year so put a minimum of 4 points from our next 2 games in my stocking tonight.
I think you’ll find the stadium isn’t empty, almost a sell out for the game on boxing day. By league one standards or any, the crowd will be immense. SAFC is a unique club.
Merry Christmas everyone.. as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, please eat more Turkey guys!!
I really liked the series. It’s less refined than say the Juventus one. Obviously the size of the clubs is different and that’s part of it. But so many of the people involved are more open. And some of them, like Jack Rodwell especially, or Grabban, and even Mcgeady complaining about the 433, don’t come across too well. Of course, neither does the CEO and the owner. And part of me wonders if that’s kind of the point? It might have been edited to show the previous management in as bad a light as possible, so as to reflect better on the new guys in charge.
Anyway, the series is great.It shows how different clubs have different cultures, but also how the fans, and even the support staff go through the same sort of emotions and challenges regardless of this.
Wishing all of you, including any Sunderland fans here, a very happy and joyous Christmas and New Year.
It is the time for good thoughts and Glad tidings so it’s great that Bellerin, Mustafi, Monreal and now Mkhi can miss tomorrow’s fixture to spend time with family.
On the other hand with Holding and Welbeck long gone to injury the more things change the more they stay the same: once again here we are half way through the footballing season running out of players and scrambling to field a decent XI!
We always seem to rack up more than our fair share of injuries at critical times of the season (they’re all critical I suppose). Is it a function of the refs letting cloggers like Burnley kick the crap out of us, or just a figment of my biased imagination? Perhaps a stats piece for the future, Tim? How many standard deviations from the mean for a career-ending injury to Santi just as we’re looking to win our first Premiership in years…
Happy Hols, you lot.
I don’t know how to measure that. Fouls called isn’t going to help because that’s not only not consistent, but often it’s the fouls not called that are the real problem (Guendouzi was stamped and had that leg-breaking tackle laid on him, neither were called a foul). And I can’t go back and watch every team and see of other teams are getting stamped and kicked the same way as us. Because I don’t have time.
Off the top of my head, I’d try:
1) Look at the dates for injuries of players and then fouls sustained in the previous 1-2 matches. (I assume injury data is available.) You can look at fouls committed against a certain player as well as fouls committed against the entire team. More fouls against the entire team likely means that the match was dirtier overall, even if not many are called against the given player. Maybe normalize this number against the team’s overall fouls sustained number.
2) Assume that there is some correlation between called fouls and uncalled fouls (more called fouls likely means more uncalled fouls).
3) Check whether there is a strong correlation between getting fouled a lot in games shortly before injury and the prevalence of injury, and whether it is the same for every team.
Alternatively, you could also just compare the overall stats for the number of called fouls against a team and the number of injuries sustained by that team for a given season. You can compare for a given team across different years (which would provide a soft control for things like the quality of the team’s medical care) and compare for different teams across the league.
Tim,
First, thank you for your consistently thoughtful work here. I hope you had an excellent holiday with your family.
Second, I saw you talk in a post a couple of days ago about the new WordPress forcing blocks on you (which I hate with a fiery passion and I’m just glad I’ve been out of the “build sites for clients with WordPress” game for a while now). Have you considered using a plugin to get back the classic editor? There are at least a couple that seem to do the job pretty well.
All the best.
I am looking at them, Thank you!
Halftime at Brighton.
Our defence is comical. We are top 4 aspirants with relegation level defending. Was seriously angry with that goal. Licht lets it run through, Leno stays on his line, the attackers still have work to do. Guendouzi was tracking. I reckon that Leno has about 2 mistakes left in credit. He makes us play batter and less panicky than Cech, but’s had an error in him every game the last few games.
Great finish from Auba, who’s unlucky not to have 2 or 3. Him and Laca the brightest spots.
Mesut peripheral, and i’d take him off. Iwobi hasn’t been playing well, but boy do we need someone who can carry the ball. The extra body in midfield is nullifying out buildup play, and Xhaka has been maddeningly conservative. About 95% of his passes have been backward.
Well, that was sh1t.
Tactically, and trechnically.
If anything, we played worse as the game progressed. The Lacazette substitution will go down asa bad mistake by Emery. The coach, with Lacazette, appears to be playing from a set playbook, as opposed to what is actually happening on the pitch.
Yes, they were industrious and competitive 2nd half, but we are 2 levels above that team. We should be beating these teams. These are the ones that Spurs routinely tonk, and that’s why they’s in the title hunt. We don’t look a Top 4 team, much as I’d like us to finish there.
I think it was more Lichsteiner’s fault (he had a poor all round game) than Leno for the Brighton goal. He missed timed his header from the long ball out of Brighton’s defence which left Leno stranded & it fell to Locadia to simply run the ball in.
Brighton had the best scoring chances and really should have beaten us by one or two.
Can’t understand the subbing off of Lacazette who was working hard throughout & Ramsey contributed very little in his place. Stand out player again for us was Guendouzi.
This was generally a very, very poor performance against a team we should have beaten quite comfortably while Spurs are scoring for fun and are now considered title challengers.