Welcome to Wrexham showed the pain and glory of British lower league football to the world but it would never have existed without Sunderland Till I Die. Rob McElhenney watched the documentary on the recommendation of his actor friend Humphrey Ker and was immediately hooked. After finishing the series he instantly decided he wanted to invest in a lower league club and soon his ambitious project with Ryan Reynolds was born.
But while shows a small, humble club on the rise amidst a lavish takeover, portrays a gigantic club in freefall. Midfielder Darron Gibson threatens to hit a fan during a drunken argument. Jack Rodwell is refusing calls to leave as his £70,000-per-week salary is bankrupting them.
Coach Chris Coleman is openly criticised by one of his players and is then subjected to a tirade by a furious fan. Why is the fan so angry? The club have just been relegated to League One for the first time in their history, having been in the Premier League for the previous 10 years.
Sunderland’s long-suffering fans are put through the mill in each episode and their visible pain makes for compelling viewing. Enough to attract an American actor who had no previous interest in the sport to buy his own club.
Sunderland stayed trapped in the third tier of English football for three years and were a laughing stock for fans across the nation. But now they are back in the top flight and no one is laughing anymore. And on Saturday, they will have a crisis-stricken Manchester United in their crosshairs…
Getty Images SportBucking the trend
In the last two seasons, all six of the teams promoted to the Premier League have gone straight back down, but Sunderland are intent on making their long-awaited return to the big time last.
They have won three and drawn two of their six games, only losing to Burnley. They are fifth in the Premier League and have the highest points total at this stage of the season for a promoted side in the last 13 years.
Sunderland buck the trend in other ways, too. They have the youngest owner in English football in 28-year-old Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, a French billionaire who bought the club in 2021 when they were in the doldrums of the third tier and had just endured the worst season in their history.
Sunderland were valued at around £40m ($53m) at the time of the takeover. By contrast, INEOS chairman Sir Jim Ratcliffe paid £1.25bn to purchase a 27.7 percent stake in United in 2024.
AdvertisementGetty Images SportHomegrown success
Although Louis-Dreyfus was born into a billionaire family and his father used to own Marseille, he is no sugar daddy. While he oversaw a revamp of the training ground and improvements to the Stadium of Light after the Premier League return, he did not lavishly fund their resurgence.
Sunderland had the 14th-highest wage bill in the Championship last year and the youngest squad, with an average age of 22. They finished fourth in the table, and although they were a massive 24 points behind winners Leeds, they took down favourites Sheffield United, flush with cash from Premier League parachute payments, in a thrilling play-off final. The promotion owed a lot to homegrown players, an area Louis-Dreyfus and sporting director Kristjaan Speakman were keen to grow when they assumed their roles in the 2020-21 season.
In a fitting summary of how the club have returned to being a club that is admired, the decisive goal was scored by academy graduate Tom Watson. The winger, though, had already been sold to Brighton for £10m, an indication of how quickly the club moves on. Fellow academy players Dan Neil – last year’s captain – plus 18-year-old midfielder Chris Rigg and goalkeeper Anthony Patterson also played big roles in the promotion campaign.
Getty Images SportStarting from scratch
And yet, instead of patting the local-boys-turned-good on the back, the club signed new players to compete with them. Dutch goalkeeper Robin Roefs has usurped Patterson as No.1 and played a pivotal role in the recent 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest, making six saves. Neil had the captain’s armband swiped off him by new signing Granit Xhaka and has only made one appearance, as a substitute, this season.
"It is a new season and we start from scratch with a new squad," is how coach Regis Le Bris explained the club’s ruthless approach. "At the same time, it is life for every player on the pitch. They have to accept that, to face the challenge of the Premier League, you have to first accept the challenge for your own position.
"If you take it positively, you are in the right mood. So far, it is really easy with every player. They have time to digest the new set-up. The competition is getting harder for all positions. Every player in the squad knows that it is important to have the best team possible to be competitive in the Premier League."
Getty Smart selling, shrewd buying
A total of 17 players left in the summer while 15 arrived as the club splashed out £167.1m, giving them the ninth-highest transfer spend in the league and the fifth-highest net spend.
They were able to finance some of the deals thanks to some clever sales worth a total of £44m, chief among them Jobe Bellingham’s sale to Borussia Dortmund for a club record fee of £27m, potentially rising to £32m. Jack Clark,e’s sale to Ipswich last year brought in £15m.
The rest of the signings were funded by the massive windfall from Premier League promotion, worth a minimum of £200m in television money and commercial revenue according to the . It is a gamble in one sense, but so far it is paying off. There is a logic to Sunderland’s recruitment model, too, which, according to , is dictated by a mixture of advanced data analytics and 'naked eye' scouting.
In addition to sporting director Speakman, the club hired former footballer Florent Ghisolfi as director of football, having worked in similar roles at Roma, Lens and Nice. He helped recruit star summer signing Enzo Le Fee from Roma this summer, while his knowledge of the French market helped them land Nordi Mukiele from Paris Saint-Germain and Habib Diarra from Strasbourg.