Crowds were now on the wane, Len Ashurst was given the sack and Wearside was excited to learn of tom Cowie's appointing Southampton’s Lawrie McMenemy as our new boss. Negotiations had apparently been conducted in the USA and after a holiday the former Coldstream Guardsman came to Wearside on an alleged salary of £250,000 per annum.

In truth the Roker Roar expected promotion. We sat back and waited for it too happen. It didn’t materialise and by the end of the season Sunderland saved their skins...just. We ended in 18th place to record our worst season ever. It was truly depressing.

The season started horrendously with 5 consecutive defeats, before our first goals and point came in a 3 v 3 home draw with Grimsby Town. The greeting of such a result as if we had just won through to the next round of the FA cup just about summed things up.

Two games later and we recorded our first victory, at Gay Meadow. We followed this up on 28 September with our first home win, against Huddersfield Town. From then on in, it’s all about the odd victory here, consecutive defeats there and a few draws liberally sprinkled.

Perhaps an only highlight was the 4 v 2 demolition of Leeds United 11 January 1986 when Nick Pickering scored a hat trick. In the end 2 home victories "saved our bacon", but it had been oh so disappointing. Anyone who said otherwise had a bad case of myopia.

The cup competitions had brought no relief. We were dumped out of the League cup by Swindon town, then in the 4rth division, Manchester City defeated us on penalties at Maine Road in the Full Members cup. Finally Manchester United thrashed us at their place 0 v 3, having disposed of Rochdale in the previous round only 2 v 0.

If we thought that this had been bad then what lay before us in the next 12 months was something that we had dreaded, but many of us thought inevitable.