The Final Reflections On 2025/2026!

Where do you even start?

Back in August, I’d have taken seventeenth place and a final-day scramble, no questions asked. Instead, the Lads have given us seventh place, fifty four points, a derby double, and European football on Wearside for the first time in over fifty years. Go on, read that sentence again. I’ll wait.

The derby double deserves its own paragraph.

The Mags spent weeks on their big, scary tifo, and the best they could come up with was “Welcome to the region’s capital” — a welcome banner. Terrifying stuff, lads! Brian Brobbey said “Thank you” in the ninetieth minute, and the pub I watched it in nearly came off its foundations — not quite the St James’ away end, mind. But nearly.

The final day arrived with the need to beat Chelsea, of all clubs, to secure European football. Trai Hume put us ahead, but Malo Gusto turned one into his own net. Somewhere in the second half, word spread that Brighton were losing. I’ve never heard the Stadium of Light like it.

As for the future? I’ve never been more optimistic. Régis Le Bris, a young squad still growing, Enzo Le Fée pulling the strings, and Thursday nights under the lights at the Stadium of Light.

Bring on Europe. Haway the lads.

This season was genuinely beyond my wildest dreams and I can’t quite believe we really qualified for the Europa League as a promoted club. Sunderland aren’t supposed to do things like this!

I can’t even really think of anything that could have gone better, beyond the obvious (win more and lose less!).

We beat the Mags twice — in the funniest way possible each time — and those six points directly led to us being in Europe and them languishing in the bottom half. We took points off almost everyone, including the previous and future champions, and stayed unbeaten at home until February.

I remember when we didn’t win at home for a calendar year; a few short years ago, I didn’t think I’d ever watch Sunderland play top flight football again and I never, ever thought I’d be lucky enough to get to watch us in Europe. We’ve just bloody achieved both in a single year!

With Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, Florent Ghisolfinand Régis Le Bris steering the ship, I think this is the most optimistic I’ve ever been about the future of our great club. I don’t know how anyone could have a single complaint with them after the past five years!

Whether we follow this up with another top-seven finish, drop to mid-table or even survive by the skin of our teeth next season, we’re going to get to watch Sunderland AFC on the European stage at least eight times. Yeah, I know. I can’t believe it either!

We’re the luckiest generation of Sunderland fans in more than fifty years. Enjoy every single minute, lads and lasses!

The season we just experienced was the stuff of dreams. No other way to describe it. I’ve been a lads fan for well over forty years and that’s the best season ever for me.

I lived and breathed the Peter Reid era and went to plenty of games at home and away, experiencing the Kevin Phillips and Niall Quinn phenomenon as it happened, but I still say this was our best season and I stand by it. It’s been amazing.

Other than the cup run in 1973 (which I was a bit too young to appreciate), this has been the best footballing performance since the 1930s for me and I have to agree with my Roker Report Predictions mate Martin, who said similar on a recent podcast.

It’s been our best in almost a century. Times are very different but pound for pound, having seen both eras and considering the level the Premier League is at right now, this outdoes Quinn and Phillips and company, in my view.

We were all prepared for a battle last summer, happy to back our lads to do their best, give their all and hopefully buck the trend of no promoted side of the last few years managing to even stay up. We did that, with a huge heap of fantastic footballing on top, and I’m still pinching myself even now.

What a team and what an outcome. And fully deserved for every lad in that squad who played a part .

I was genuinely expecting a struggle despite the mood and momentum at the club after the playoffs. We finished fifth in the Championship — we didn’t walk the second division title by a mile and we also didn’t find a twenty five-plus scorer like we did nearly thirty years ago and use that to propel us up.

This was a collaborative and unified effort.

We bonded as a team and a club, worked very hard, used the talent we had across the squad and the park really well, and found a way to get promoted last season. And funnily enough, we repeated that approach under the leadership of Régis Le Bris and Granit Xhaka, and it worked during our first Premier League season for almost a decade.

Given my expectations last summer, I am well and truly happy to get a little bit carried away this season coming.

Now we’re up and have shown we’re very competitive, there’s a risk that teams will work us out and that extra European games could impact our league form.

So, we need to stay humble, tactically agile and we need to expand and rotate the squad. With Le Bris at the helm and Florent Ghisolfi scouting gems, we can do that — I’ve never been so confident of it.

If we invest in a few players in a few key positions, there’s no reason we can’t have another season where we finish in the top half and maybe have a go at progressing quite far in the Europa League.

Beating the Mags is the norm now. That’s always special but is becoming an expectation and not a worry. We want and deserve more lofty achievements and the butterflies in my gut are already fluttering at the experiences to come from August onwards.

We may not claim to be the richest club in the world, but right now we’re one of the best and I’m going to bask in that all summer, through the World Cup and right up to kick off for the 2026/2027 campaign.

I love this club and I can’t wait.

What can you really say about this season that hasn’t already been said?

It’s incredibly difficult to fully articulate how brilliant and incredible it was, bolstered again by a feeling that the club, the fans and the players are all as united as they’ve perhaps ever been.

For myself and what I assume are many others, the real magic lies in the people we’ve shared this meteoric rise with. When I looked around on that Sunday, I saw the jubilation on the faces of people who were once complete strangers — who we all collectively shared the lows with — ascending to unimaginable highs.

We’ve all endured and remained resolute. At times things became fractured and tense but all those people still showed up, week in, week out. The magic was spending that moment, collectively, just as we’d shared the lows.

Family, friends, strangers…we did it together and in essence, that’s what makes it all so special — to come from the darkness and into the light. The only ones who can truly understand what it means and how it feels are those souls who braved it all to be there when it all came together.

For the future? Well, nobody knows, but if you can’t let yourself dream after the last twelve months, perhaps this game and in particularly this club isn’t for you. All we can do is embrace what’s to come and fate willing, yet more success.

As I look back on the last few years, I always go back to walking out of Wembley after losing to Charlton in the League One playoffs and my cousin turning to me and simply asking “When is it ever going to be us?”, and ever since that moment, it’s only ever been us.

As they say on Test Match Special, “What a time to be alive”.