The Mackems Are Back!

Sunderland are back into the Premier League and there will be derby matches next season ... Great eh? Hmmm.

I’d not been taking much notice but I couldn’t help clock that Sunderland had beaten Coventry away in the first leg of the Championship Play-Off Semi Final. That surprised me to be honest. I knew enough to believe their form going into the play-offs was terrible and Frank Lampard’s side were well-fancied to get beyond them and into the final. That didn’t happen and at the Stadium of Light when they seemed to be heading for penalties in the last few seconds of extra time, Coventry conceded an equalising goal which sent the Red & Whites to Wembley amidst scenes of euphoria in the stands.

I started paying more attention. Surely Sheffield United would do them in the final wouldn’t they?

Sheffield United finished some 15 points ahead of them in the Championship so this looked like a gimme to Chris Wilder’s team. I didn’t watch their game being out and about doing chores but was interested enough to check the scores on my phone … 1-0 to The Blades … then 2-0 … but ruled out for some infringement. We’re driving home from LIDL and I ask my better half … how did Sunderland get on … they won 2-1. I ask if she’s joking … she isn’t.

Sunderland are back in the Premier League after what I’m told is an eight year absence, the longest duration in their history they have been out of the top flight.

It isn’t for effect I say I know nothing about their team. I’ll correct that … I know little about their team. I know Chris Rigg (Mag) is highly rated by them and has been linked to us previously and Jude Bellingham’s brother plays for them. Though he might be going to somewhere in Germany I’ve read. The goalie is from North Shields and likes a pint I hear. And the kid who scored their Wembley winner has already departed exit stage left for Brighton.

Beyond that I struggle. I definitely couldn’t name half their team and stumble over the name of their French manager. I saw they celebrated their semi final triumph at a pub in Jesmond. I don’t think many of the locals would have known who they were.

I suppose because they are back on our radar I should pay more heed. I will.

But how do I feel about their promotion?

Irritated I think. It was always going to happen one day I know. But I did think/hope they were at risk of spending a lot longer than eight years out of the top flight if I’m honest … like Leeds and Forest or ‘Boro.

I’d much prefer them not to have been promoted because the so-called rivalry became completely overblown. In the absence of either club having any chance of doing anything, us largely due to Ashley’s dead-hand and them squandering Ellis Short’s money and picking duds as managers, the derby games had become season defining, small-time or as they saying goes, two bald men fighting over a comb. A meaningless side-show and a sign of how far we’d fallen down the reckoning.

That we latterly forgot how to beat them was another milestone in Ashley’s trashing of Newcastle United.

When I’ve expressed that view to some people (mainly those who don’t actively follow Newcastle United) I’ve been chided for pettiness but I think I’m probably more representative of the mainstream, local, long-term match going Mag view than those with a passing interest who repeat the tired lines they want all the NE clubs to do well. I don’t. I only want Newcastle United to be successful and my life isn’t improved one bit with Sunderland AFC in it.

Neither do I believe next season’s fixtures represent 6 easy points. Football simply isn’t like that. If we beat them that will be the expected outcome because we are miles better and we have reasonable expectations to improve this summer. If the worst happens, imagine the scenes? It’s not worth contemplating. We can’t win in reality. Well, not in a true sporting sense. No-one is going to say well done to Newcastle United for beating Sunderland are they?

The expectation is they will struggle next season. The level of struggle is objectively predicted to be similar to Southampton this season. I definitely hope that is the case and I will greatly enjoy the pummelling they take on a regular basis if that comes to pass.

Does relegation await them? It is hard at present to conceive of three sides next season that will be worse than them. Or even one if I’m brutally honest.

For good reason I’ve heard some of their fans previously express the view they were happy to stay in the second tier, fearful of the gap between the Premier League and the Championship. That’s a sad state of affairs really. None of them seem to be talking like that now so that suggests they were lying to themselves as comfort for being crap.

I can’t argue Sunderland should be in the Premier League. They have a stadium much superior than many in the top flight, they have a large, if often MIA support and a history, though much of it of the pre-historic variety. You would put them higher in the pecking order of big clubs (admittedly that means anything you want it to) than Fulham, Palace, Brighton, Bournemouth, Wolves, Forest, Burnley, Brentford at least.

On the down-side the core catchment area of their support is possibly the most economically disadvantaged in the UK as a result of the de-industrialisation of the 1980s. That matters in terms of the financial strength of their club given what they can charge on the gate and bring in through corporate etc. I don’t intend that as economic sneering, my disdain doesn’t stretch as far to mock poverty.

If they go straight back down I will enjoy it. I hope they will unravel Chris Coleman - Lawrie McMenemy style and tumble back into League One as they did in their nadir. But I can’t ignore the financial benefit they will gain from being in the Premier League and the associated parachute paraphernalia. That may make them more attractive to investors beyond that gormless, trust fund kid who owns them at the moment. I didn’t want them to have any of that.

My Dad insisted Newcastle United needed a strong Sunderland to raise our club’s ambition. He had a point back in the 70s and 80s but football is completely different now. We absolutely do not benefit from them at all. I’d argue the opposite is true. Eddie Howe’s progress with his team has, with the exception of the 2024 FAC Third Round cake-walk, benefitted from them being out the picture. He has done well without the ugliness of derby matches and the poison they draw.

I don’t think their promotion and what is expected to be instant relegation will pause Newcastle United’s growth as the de-facto Club of the North but it does re-introduce a bitter parochialism I hadn’t missed. Its a story the local media will blow up for clicks but outside the North East none of this stuff registers at all.

Beat Sunderland to shrugged shoulders nationally or put four passed PSG in the Champions League to make the continent sit up? You decide.

There is a power imbalance in our relationship with Sunderland now. We have owners with the commitment and resources to make Newcastle United number one. Sunderland have owners who are similar to Mike Ashley in promoting their club as a stepping stone to players (though their best players have so far headed to Ipswich and Brighton as opposed to Liverpool, PSG, Spurs, Arsenal).

The inescapable knowledge of that has deepened their bitterness towards us and manifested a fake concern in human rights in Saudi Arabia. Though weirdly nowhere else. The atrocities in Gaza continue but barely register in the lemon-sucking Mackem consciousness because they have no Newcastle United angle to affect outrage at.

That embittered, small-town parochialism of Sunderland makes former Newcastle United Chairman Freddie Shepherd’s reported observation “we don’t like them, they fucking hate us” even more on point. The wild paranoia of the Magedia © patter, attributing the decline of Sunderland economically to some form of anti-Mackem, Geordie conspiracy may be grist to the mill of entertaining social media but it is more real than some of us realise. The FTM culture has legs and walks about the place.

I don’t have the energy to return Sunderland’s hatred. I suspect they will revel in the inflated importance of being our local rivals again for however long it lasts. But in these last few years with our raised expectations, my passions are elsewhere … in Champions League fixtures, winning our first domestic trophy in seventy years and seeing Eddie Howe’s team close the gap on the Premier League elite. I’ve not missed them at all.

Maybe this is that famed Mag arrogance we’re accused of … or maybe it is the knowledge we are just better.

All the best

Pat Hennessey