Saturday Spotlight: Turnaround has Cats ready for top-flight, insists Fickling

Twelve months ago last week, Sunderland travelled to West Ham for a League game that was to all but confirm what many had suspected for some time.

It might not have been mathematically certain for a further two games, but last March's 2-0 defeat at Upton Park meant just one thing - Sunderland were heading for the First Division.

They were also well on the way to a 17-game losing run that would almost make them the worst team in Football League history and, according to many, were on a one-way street that would end in financial oblivion.

At the time, it looked like merely keeping Sunderland afloat would be quite an achievement for vice-chairman and lifelong Rokerite John Fickling.

Instead, Fickling today finds himself presiding over a football club rapidly re-establishing itself both on and off the pitch.

In the boardroom, Sunderland's directors have instigated a series of stringent cuts that have stabilised the club's rapidly escalating debts at a manageable £36m.

Seventy employees from all levels of the company were made redundant while, after dropping out of the Premiership, Bob Murray oversaw a massive squad-stripping exercise that saw the annual wage bill halved to £17m.

Others have been forced to adopt similar measures after slipping out of the top-flight but, for most, financial survival has been accompanied by footballing failure.

That looked to be on the cards at the Stadium of Light after the current campaign began with successive League defeats to Nottingham Forest and Millwall.

But today's game with Derby marks the start of a ten-match run- in that could see Sunderland make an instant return to the top-flight.

With an FA Cup semi-final appearance at Old Trafford just around the corner as well, the Black Cats could yet achieve a most remarkable turnaround.

"We've come a hell of a long way from where we were 12 months ago," admitted Fickling. "If someone had offered all of this then, we would have bitten their hands off.

"It was just over a year ago that Mick (McCarthy) was appointed. We knew that Division One football was staring us in the face.

"We appointed Mick then for that very reason. We wanted him to come in and assess what the problems were but, more importantly, to try and start making plans to move us forward again.

"Those last nine games - although the results were disappointing - gave him the chance to see just how bad things were.

"It allowed him to take a lot of appropriate action in the summer and allowed us to move a large number of players on."

Last summer proved to be a crucial period in saving Sunderland from the kind of financial meltdown witnessed at the likes of Bradford, Sheffield Wednesday and Derby after they crashed out of the Premiership.

Instead of waiting until the last possible moment before facing up to the harsh reality of losing £20m worth of revenue, Sunderland's board were already well on the way towards identifying a remedy by the time the season ended in a 4-0 defeat at Highbury.

"Our early action has proved very, very important," said Fickling. "One of the few benefits in us having such an appalling season was that the writing was on the wall sooner rather than later.

"That's proved to have been a major bonus to us and you do wonder about other clubs that are going to go right to the last day.

"That kind of uncertainty can be horrendous. It's probably even worse now because the transfer market has shrunk. We were able to move players out. There's no guarantee that other clubs will be able to do a similar thing."

Sunderland have gone from having 16 players earning more than a million pounds a year to having none, but next weekend will still see them take on Millwall for a place in the FA Cup final.

Should they be successful, next season will see European football return to Wearside for the first time in 31 years.

"The fans haven't had much to shout about over the last couple of years," said Fickling.

"It's been pretty abysmal for them, so to have a cup run like we've had creates a feelgood factor that's been absent for a while now.

"It puts a smile back on people's faces. You only have to walk around Sunderland to see what it means to the fans. There's a real buzz about the city again and, after all that's happened, there's a genuine feeling that something good could be just around the corner.

"Financially it's also been a great bonus - you're probably talking well into a seven-figure sum already."

An FA Cup final appearance would be quite an achievement given that Sunderland were being labelled the worst side in Premiership history at this time last year.

But anyone associated with the club would gladly swap Cardiff glory for an instant return to the top-flight.

Promotion would see a revitalised Sunderland back among the big boys, but it would also see a return of the pressures that almost drove the club to the wall in the first place.

To compete in the Premiership, Sunderland would need a dramatic overhaul of their current squad. That would lead to an inevitable increase in the wage bill and dismantle the carefully constructed constraints that have served the club so well this year.

Fickling admits that changes would be needed if the season ended in promotion. But he is adamant that the mistakes will not be repeated again.

"If we get up into the Premiership, we'd deal with things in a different way," he said. "We'll have an extra £20m coming in, but that doesn't mean you've got to go out and spend massive amounts of it in the transfer market.

"There are different ways of going about things. The fact that we've brought in players on loans and short-term deals reflects how the football industry is changing.

"You may have to spend money on wages but, given the revenue that comes in from Premiership football, that's sustainable and we're in as good a position as anybody outside the elite clubs.

"We could compete if we went up. It would be a new challenge, there's no doubt about that. But it would be a good one."