On this day in 1999, a thunderous victory away to Derby County, that included a Kevin Phillips hat trick, saw newly promoted Sunderland move up to fourth in the Premier League.
We had been promoted to the top flight following a then record points tally for the second tier (105) but our opening match wasn’t exactly kind to us as we slumped to a 4-0 defeat at Stamford Bridge. This wasn’t the start of a relegation scrap though and Peter Reid’s men would see defeat just once in the next seven games in all competitions (that came as a result of Alex Rae being sent off versus Leeds United and accordingly a 1-0 lead being thrown away) and one of those games was a first win against Newcastle United in nine years.
Going into this match we sat in 8th place and our starting XI was this:
Thomas Sorensen
Chris Makin
Michael Gray
Gavin McCann
Steve Bould
Paul Butler
Nicky Summerbee
Kevin Ball
Niall Quinn
Kevin Phillips
Stefan Schwarz
And there was a bench of:
Andy Marriott, Darren Williams, Alex Rae, John Oster and Danny Dichio.
The first goal came in the 24th minute, Summerbee sent a free kick into the box and it bounced around dangerously before the ball fell to McCann and he fired it into the bottom right corner. Prior to the break, we doubled our advantage and Phillips got his first of the afternoon. Gray directed a pass into the six yard area and Super Kev was there to tap it home.
Michael Gray was involved in the creation of our third goal a few minutes into the second half. This time around he tried to find Phillips in the box with a looping cross but a Derby defender got his head to it. The ball then travelled up in the air and Kevin Phillips struck it first time when it got low enough and it bounced against the ground before hitting the back of the net. Three minutes afterwards and we had a fourth, Gray took a free kick on the left side of the pitch, just beyond the halfway line. He booted it up and it reached just inside the penalty area. County’s goalkeeper, Russell Hoult, came for it too late and Quinn headed it over Hoult and into the goal.
Phillips got his hat trick five minutes from time as we hit Derby on a counter attack. Rae got round a defender and passed it to the striker and he struck into the bottom left corner.
We’d go on to score ten goals and concede none in our next three games and we’d be second by October. A poor run from December to March ended any hopes of a pretty unlikely Premier League title. We ended up finishing seventh, seven points off of European football, which is obviously still a great effort for a team that had just been promoted. Kevin Phillips would net 30 times over the course of the season and that meant he was awarded the European Golden Shoe, he would remain the only English player to win that accolade for 24 years until Harry Kane did so with Bayern Munich.
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