Sunderland: 10 Most Costly Mistakes In Black Cats History
6. Sgt Wilko
After Peter Reids time at Sunderland finally ran out the North East footballing rumour mill went into overdrive as fans were led to expect a new dawn. Excitement at the next prospective boss had the club abuzz and former Leeds United managers David OLeary and George Graham were heavily linked at the time. But Chairman Bob Murray had other ideas, it seemed: he effectively ruled out OLeary due to the transfer policy, which had existed during the Irishmans time at Leeds, and turned instead to another Leeds manager - somewhat unexpectedly. Given his short, 20 league match tenure and his inability to sign anyone, its difficult to know if he was indeed the worst appointment since the McMenemy years, but looking at the merry-go-round of managers in the early 90s, there wasnt a great level of expectation in those appointments. Where here there was, until the actual candidate was officially unveiled as Howard Wilkinson. On the surface, he remains the last English manager to win the league and he possessed experience, installing discipline in the players. But that was about it; the football in all but two games his only two wins was dire. The lack of ambition of his teams just about brought you to tears, as would his team talks, youd imagine. If a side could have stayed up on goalless draws alone, Wilkinson would have been laughing, we however werent as the team crashed and burned out of the division on 20 points.
