On This Day (4th August 2017): A False Dawn as Sunderland Returned to the Championship

Sunderland’s opening Championship fixture of the 2017 – 18 season gave us some sort of promise for the campaign ahead.

After 10 years in the Premier League, a home game against Derby County on the opening day had the potential to be a statement of intent. Following our relegation season of 2016 – 17, during which we finished bottom of the table with 24 points, manager David Moyes resigned. Ellis Short replaced him with Simon Grayson, who was in charge for this game, although he himself was replaced by Chris Coleman in October 2017.

It was a game we might have expected to win.

Derby had been in the Championship for nine seasons by this point and, while they had reached the play-offs on three occasions during that spell, they were in the middle of a period of frequent managerial changes – nine managers in six seasons, in fact.

The Friday evening game was marked by a poignant tribute to Bradley Lowery before kick-off. Bradley had become quite the icon around the Stadium of Light but, sadly, lost his battle with neuroblastoma the previous month.

Derby scored after 12 minutes via a loose ball in the area, which was turned home by Bradley Johnson. Despite enjoying a decent share of possession, it took Sunderland until just before half-time to equalise through Lewis Grabban. The Lads had been awarded a penalty after Butterfield handled in the box.

The game had been fairly even, with Sunderland probably having the better of it. That continued into the second half and we were a little unlucky not to go ahead after James Vaughan missed the target and Grabban hit the post following good play from Lee Cattermole.

Both sides had chances to win it late on, but the game ended 1 – 1.

A crowd of just under 30,000 disillusioned supporters watched what turned out to be the first in a long line of disappointing results that season. As I’m sure we all know, relegation to the third tier at the end of the campaign – for only the second time in our 134-year history – saw Sunderland enter a period that represented the club’s lowest ebb.