On this day in 2015, Gus Poyet was sacked after an awful defeat at home to Aston Villa. Appointed in 2013, the Premier League's first ever Uruguayan manager had a win rate of just 30.67%, which seems pretty low. However, given just how bad some of the managers we have hired in recent years have been (and let’s not forget the players on the pitch) Poyet’s record is actually respectable when compared to that of other Premier League era managers. Miserable David Moyes had just an 18.6% win rate, Paolo Di Canio was considerably better with a 23.08% win rate and Big Sam was just shy of Poyet with a 29.03% win rate. Of recent managers in the top flight, only Martin O’Neill has a better record.
To look back at managers based on win percentage alone can seem a bit revisionist, as the stats alone don’t factor in many other facets about what makes football enjoyable to watch. Towards the end of Poyet’s tenure, we were playing pretty bleak football. But, statistically, he had a fairly decent record overall, much improved on that of his predecessor Di Canio and certainly better than Dick Advocaat, who succeeded Poyet. But what means more than win percentages (after all, we weren’t challenging for Champions League places) are the memories.
In his time at the club, Poyet had often recruited poorly. The signings of Liam Bridcutt and Will Buckley from Championship Brighton, as well as the signing of Ignacio Scocco and the £10 million signing of Jack Rodwell all came during his tenure. All of these players were simply not good enough.
Just before Poyet was sacked, the team had won only two Premier League games at the Stadium of Light all season and relations between the manager and the board were reportedly extremely strained. Going into the game against Villa, we had failed to score in four of their last five Premier League home games, winning just two of the last fifteen home games in the league in the process whilst also conceding the most in the league. Thankfully for our shaky defence, Villa were the lowest scoring team in the Premier League. What could go wrong?
Everything that could have gone wrong did. Villa doubled the amount of away goals that they had scored all season in that game alone, putting 4 past us when they had only scored 4 on the road that entire season. After Gus's resultant sacking, Ellis Short said that ‘Sadly, we have not made the progress that any of us had hoped for this season and we find ourselves battling, once again, at the wrong end of the table. We have therefore made the difficult decision that a change is needed.’
18 months is an era for a manager at Sunderland and the Poyet era came to a distinctly miserable end. However, all this being said, the season prior was in stark contrast to how his term ended. Gus breathed new life into the club initially. When he came in, we were rooted to the bottom of the table. He took us to the League Cup final against Manchester City, ensured we did the double over Newcastle and perhaps most entertaining of all, completed the most dramatic of great escapes. His first home game was against Newcastle and we triumphed 2-1. A great way to start his career at the club, securing the kind of victory that will go a long way to endearing anybody to our fans.
After a 5–1 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur, Poyet famously said that we would need a ‘miracle’ to avoid relegation, something ‘unique’ in Premier League history. Defeat to Everton in our following league game meant that avoiding relegation would take a Herculean effort, one which our average squad never looked like they could muster.
However, against all the odds, we were a side transformed, inspired. Connor Wickham played like a mix of prime Gonzalo Higuain and Karim Benzema, enjoying the best form of his career. He netted a brace against Manchester City, opened the scoring when we defeated Chelsea 2-1 away, consequently bringing the end to Jose Mourinho’s astonishing record of never losing at home in the Premier League and also he scored another brace to help us batter Cardiff 4–0. We beat Manchester United at Old Trafford for the first time in many supporter’s lifetimes and were in title winning form at the end of the season, securing 13 points out of a possible 15.
This is how Poyet will be remembered. We didn’t win silverware, in fact all Poyet did was secure another Premier League season in which we, like Sisyphus condemned to the eternal punishment of forever rolling a boulder up a hill in the depths of Hades , would battle relegation yet again before parting with another manager. He delayed the eventual relegation which we all knew was coming, but he did it in style. Poyet is generally remembered fondly at the club and whilst not to the same extent as with Roy Keane and Big Sam, the odd fan still clamours for Poyet when we inevitably part ways with another manager.
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