NETFLIX AND THRILL

After a fall captured in all its miserable detail by Sunderland 'Til I Die, the Black Cats are back in the top tier - FFT looks back on an epic journey, aided by the documentary's stars

- Ed McCambridge

Rarely have two points been such cause for celebration. Come the end of the 2015-16 Premier League campaign, that was all that would separate Sam Allardyce's Sunderland, in 17th, from relegated rivals Newcastle United.

"There's no better feeling," lifelong Mackem and host of the Roker Report podcast, Gavin Henderson, tells FFT.

"Big Sam came in that year and saved us, while they went down. Still, it hadn't been a good season." Fans were used to it by then, having finished 16th, 14th and 17th over the previous three campaigns. Years of scattergun spending under a string of managers left a once-proud institution with an ageing, bloated squad and huge debts. To make matters worse, Allardyce was lured away by England that summer - and his replacement, David Moyes, didn't sugar-coat things.

"He was saying as early as August that we were facing a relegation dogfight," recalls former defender Gary Bennett, who appeared over 400 times for the Black Cats from 1984 to 1995. "That set the tone for a dreadful campaign."

Despite a 34-year-old Jermain Defoe's 15-goal haul, the Mackems' decade-long Premier League stay came to an end in 2016-17 as they finished bottom and 16 points from safety. Moyes resigned.

"That whole season was depressing," recalls Henderson. "That was our fifth relegation battle in a row and there was clearly something rotten. I still tried to see it as a chance to hit the reset button and come back up refreshed." The summer of 2017 saw the squad stripped bare, with experienced heads like Defoe, Sebastian Larsson, Steven Pienaar and Joleon Lescott allowed to leave, while Jordan Pickford's £30 million switch to Everton helped raise funds.