Sunderland may be surprise survivors in Premier League

Regis Le Bris’s young side might just buck the trend of teams promoted from the Championship going straight back down

- RICHARD JOLLY

They have been to Accrington more recently than Anfield, Cheltenham more recently than Chelsea. They played Morecambe, not Manchester United, AFC Wimbledon not Arsenal. The fixture list bore an incongruous look with Fleetwood and Burton, Rochdale and Scunthorpe. Sunderland were slumming it, the club marooned in League One for four seasons.

They would happily get stuck in a division again, now that, as the chant went, they are Premier League, the return to the elite sealed in spectacular fashion at Wembley. For manager Regis Le Bris, whose players had told him earlier in the season they wanted to get promoted, “they believed in their dream”.

Captain Dan Neil demurred, arguing the way in which Sunderland went up was “not even what dreams are made of because you wouldn’t dream of something like that”. Not when Dan Ballard’s 122nd-minute decider against Coventry was followed by Tommy Watson’s 95th-minute Wembley winner against Sheffield United.