I’ll admit something from the outset: I’m probably not always the easiest Sunderland supporter to sit beside.
I groan at misplaced passes. I question decisions. I occasionally wonder aloud why a very talented footballer has done something which, from my considerably safer and less pressurised position in the stands, appears completely inexplicable.
There’ll undoubtedly be people who’ve sat within ten yards of me over the years nodding vigorously at this point.
Perhaps I expect too much sometimes. Perhaps I should learn to take a breath, count to ten and remember that the players on the pitch are making split-second decisions while I watch from a plastic seat with the benefit of hindsight.
But these aren’t the Sunderland players of League One anymore.
We aren’t turning up simply grateful to have escaped Burton, Fleetwood and Accrington Stanley. This is the second season of our Premier League return. European football has entered the conversation. The standards have changed because Sunderland changed them.
That was why a brief exchange during the defeat against Brighton stayed with me long after the final whistle.
At one point, Granit Xhaka collected the ball inside his own half and attempted to take on two opponents. He lost possession, placing Sunderland in a potentially dangerous position. I criticised the decision.
Not Xhaka. Not his overall performance. Not his ability, character, signing or contribution to Sunderland.
One decision. A single moment in a football match.
Another supporter nearby took exception to it, and an argument followed. It wasn’t particularly dramatic, nor was it the first disagreement ever to occur between two people watching Sunderland. It wasn’t my first, either. Anyone who has spent enough Saturday afternoons inside a football ground will have witnessed far worse.
What struck me was the assumption behind it.
By criticising Xhaka in that moment, I was apparently being unreasonable. I was failing to appreciate what he brings to the team or losing perspective on how far Sunderland have come.
Yet the opposite was true.
I expect better from Granit Xhaka precisely because he’s Granit Xhaka.
He’s an experienced footballer who has operated at an elite level. He sees things on a football pitch most of us wouldn’t recognise until the third replay. His quality and intelligence are among the reasons Sunderland brought him to the club, and they’re why supporters hold him in such high regard.
If anything, my frustration was a measure of that regard.
A player of his experience will know better than anyone when he’s made the wrong choice. I’m fairly sure Xhaka doesn’t assess his own performances by remembering that Sunderland once lost at home to Burton Albion, either.
He’ll hold himself to extremely high standards. Why should it be controversial for supporters to do the same?
There seems to be an increasingly narrow definition of what passion is allowed to look like inside a football ground.
Nobody objects when it’s positive.
Nobody turns around as you’re celebrating a Sunderland goal and asks you to moderate your emotions. Nobody tells you to maintain some perspective as you’re hugging the person beside you, screaming yourself hoarse or stumbling over the seats in front.
Passion is welcomed when it produces noise, colour and celebration.
When it becomes frustration, however, it can be viewed rather differently.
Question a pass, criticise a substitution or suggest that a player should have done better, and the accusation soon follows. You’re negative. You’re entitled. You’ve forgotten where Sunderland came from. It’s the tired argument of what makes a “good supporter”, if such a thing even exists.
But passion doesn’t only count when it’s positive.
Sometimes it’s irritation. Sometimes it’s disappointment. Sometimes it’s expecting an excellent footballer to do something excellent and being frustrated when he doesn’t.
The important distinction is between criticising a moment and condemning the person responsible for it.
Footballers will make mistakes. Even the very best players get decisions wrong, misplace passes and lose possession. Pointing that out doesn’t mean a supporter has suddenly decided they’re useless.
Xhaka could be outstanding for 89 minutes and still make one choice worthy of criticism. The criticism doesn’t erase everything else, just as the rest of his performance doesn’t make that particular decision a good one.
Both things can be true.
That nuance is often lost in the stands, and probably lost even more quickly online. Every observation risks being treated as a definitive judgement. A player is either brilliant or hopeless. A supporter is either relentlessly positive or irredeemably miserable.
Football has never really worked like that. Neither has supporting Sunderland.
There are people who’ll naturally find the positive in almost any performance, and others who’ll immediately notice what could’ve been done better. Most of us move between the two depending on the score, the opposition and how recently we’ve eaten.
None of those approaches automatically makes someone a better supporter.
The disagreements are part of it. Football is subjective, emotional and frequently irrational. Put thousands of people in the same ground and ask them to interpret the same incident, and you’ll receive thousands of slightly different versions of what happened. Certainly, plenty of us were convinced Brighton’s red card was the correct decision after VAR intervened. Mike Dean, in his Referees’ Club, thought VAR was wrong to intervene. He was wrong, of course, but then I’m a Sunderland supporter and he’s Mike Dean. Perhaps we’re proving the point.
That’s one of the reasons we keep going.
My frustration is born from the belief that Sunderland can be better, and recent years have surely justified that belief.
This club didn’t climb from League One, return to the Premier League and begin looking towards Europe by deciding everything was good enough. It happened because standards were raised, met and then raised again.
At every stage, Sunderland asked more of themselves.
Promotion from League One wasn’t treated as the end of the journey. Reaching the Championship play-offs wasn’t considered the limit. Returning to the Premier League didn’t mean the club stopped trying to improve.
The people responsible for Sunderland’s progress haven’t achieved it by spending every difficult Monday morning saying, ‘Never mind, at least we’re not in League One.’
They’ll analyse decisions. They’ll identify mistakes. They’ll ask where the team can improve and what needs to change.
That isn’t negativity. It’s ambition.
Why should ambition from the stands be considered such an ugly thing?
Of course, gratitude matters.
Nobody who lived through the League One years should take the current position for granted. Those afternoons weren’t some kind of character-building adventure we should look back on fondly. They were often bleak, frustrating and profoundly wearing.
Being able to watch Sunderland competing at this level again is something to appreciate.
But gratitude and ambition aren’t opposites.
We can remember where Sunderland were while still wanting to see where they might go. We can appreciate an extraordinary period of progress without pretending every performance is flawless. We can admire Xhaka while criticising a mistake.
In fact, the two things are connected.
The reason standards have risen is because the players, the head coach and the club have shown us what they’re capable of. Our expectations haven’t appeared from nowhere. Sunderland created them.
Perhaps there’ll come a point when I do need to calm down. Maybe I’ll see us lift another major trophy one day and decide that’s me done. I’m sure the club will give me a testimonial.
I’m sure the people around me would appreciate fewer running commentaries on misplaced passes and a little more silent reflection. Football does ridiculous things to otherwise relatively rational people, and I’m certainly no exception.
The truth is, I don’t want to change. I can think about football reasonably and logically, but being there comes from the heart. Mine can be demanding and tough sometimes, but it’s no less passionate for it.
Sometimes, I’ll get things wrong. Sometimes, the pass I criticise will have been the only one available. Sometimes, the player will have seen a danger or an opportunity that I couldn’t possibly recognise from my seat.
And sometimes, other supporters will simply disagree.
That’s fine. Disagreement is part of football, provided we can still recognise that the person on the other side of it wants exactly the same thing.
I’m not critical because I’ve stopped enjoying Sunderland’s progress. I’m critical because that progress has made me believe there is still more to come. Xhaka himself has told us as much. His rallying cry at the end of last season wasn’t about being satisfied with what Sunderland had achieved. It was about what could come next.
I know I’m not always the easiest Sunderland supporter to sit beside.
I’ll groan. I’ll question decisions. I’ll expect excellent footballers to do excellent things, probably with considerably less patience than I should.
But that isn’t because I’ve forgotten where Sunderland have come from.
It’s because I can see where they might still go.
The goalposts moved because Sunderland moved them.