Why I absolutely hate it when outsiders dig out Sunderland fans for "negativity" and brand them toxic
A thread... The following tweets are all things that have happened to the club since the turn of the century.

After finishing 17th the previous season, Sunderland sack Peter Reid following a slow start to the 02-03 campaign. They are replaced by Howard Wilkinson and Steve Cotterill, but after 20 matches and just two wins they are dismissed.

During Wilkinson/Cotterill's reign the dynamic duo oversaw a 3-1 home loss to Charlton Athletic, during which the hosts scored three own goals inside ten first half minutes. Two of those own goals came from striker Michael Proctor.

Mick McCarthy took over but failed to muster a single point before the end of the season, which we ended on 19 points. Only a 2-0 away victory at Preston early on in the 03-04 season prevented Sunderland from equalling Darwen FC's record of 18 straight losses.

That season ended in heartache with the club losing both the FA Cup and the Play Off semi-final. The following year we were promoted as Champions but just 12 months later we were relegated with a new record low total of 15 points. We won just three times all season.

During that campaign only a 2-1 victory over Fulham under caretaker boss Kevin Ball in the final home game of the season prevented the lads from going an entire Premier League season without winning a home game. (More on wretched home form later).

In 06-07 we went from bottom of the Championship right to the very top under Roy Keane, losing just twice from January onwards. I mean we still managed to make the front page of the nation tabloids as a number of our players recorded a sex tape with Miss Sunderland but still.

The next few seasons were fairly calm by Sunderland's standards with Keane, Sbragia and Bruce all keeping the lads afloat. During 09-10 we still managed to go from Oct 21, 2009 until March 9, 2010 without winning a league game. On October 31, 2010 we are beaten 5-1 by Newcastle.

Towards the end of the 2012-13 season we turn to Paolo Di Canio. We beat Newcastle 3-0 but win just one more league game before he is sacked after a 3-0 defeat to West Brom early on in the 2013-14 season.

In that time he managed to have a 20 minute rant after the final day of 12-13 season, go off on one about condiments and have a non verbal chat with the fans after his final game. Things got so bad that the players are rumoured to have visited the hierarchy demanding his sacking.

Amazingly, despite having just one point on the day Di Canio was sacked, we stayed up and reached the League Cup final that season but after an indifferent start to the 14-15 season we are beaten 8-0 by Southampton with Vergini scoring the best own goal you will ever see.

We keep staying up and we keep beating the Mags, but off the field things continue to be grim as we sign Emmanuel Eboue who is banned from football before playing a single minute for the club and Adam Johnson goes to prison.

The banter really picks up as we enter July 2016, Sam Allardyce joins England but is sacked after one game for dodgy dealings over pints of wine. David Moyes comes in and immediately spreads an atmosphere of sheer gloom and desperation around the club.

We spend the entirity of transfer deadline day in persuit of 15-16 loan star, Yann M'Vila, we instead push through a late deal sheet and sign Mika (not that one) after the transfer window had shut, for £2 million. Mila never played a game for Sunderland in two and a half years.

Moyes' transfer policy continued to based around whether or not you'd played for Everton or Man United in 2010 and we topped it off by signing Joleon lescott. We were relegated after winning just six games and collecting 24 points.

In our ten year Premier League stint home fans were treated to just 61 wins in 190 matches. Still at least we'll win more in the Championship right?

Lol. It took until almost Christmas before we won at home and when we did beat Fulham it was almost a calendar year after our previous home victory. Some fans had enjoyed two years worth of Christmas parties in that time and the clocks had gone forwards and backwards again.

Of course, this was the season Netflix rolled into town, the season really got going in our final friendly when Darron Gibson crashed a wedding party hours after a 5-0 loss to Celtic and later crashed his car while still over the limit on the morning of a match.

We signed Marc Wilson from Stoke despite on camera saying that he only had pain "when I strike the ball" during a medical, Jason Steele, Lee Camp and Robbin Ruiter were outdoing eachother every week and we paid Jack Rodwell over 60k a week to not play football.

During the season we only won seven games. Bring our grand total of victories for the two relegation seasons to 13 in 84 games.

But still, we've got to have bottomed out now right? Nah, the following season we lost the Checkatrade Trophy final on penalties and lost the play off final to a last minute goal and paid £4 million for Will Grigg despite the manager saying he didn't want him at that price.

The following season we sack Ross and appoint Phil Parkinson who guides us to just two wins in his opening 13 competitive games. He turns our fortunes around but it is not enough to prevent a third successive season in League One and after the season is curtailed we finished 8th.

All of this is before you even consider the ownership issues, the 100 point targets, the blaming of the fans for everything, the refusal to put the £20 million they took out of the club back in and the deflated morale of everyone due to Covid 19.

The fact that Sunderland averaged over 40k fans in the Premier League during those runs and over 30k in both League One campaigns is testement to our loyalty. At this stage even Ghandi would've nutted someone. We are not the problem, one day both the fans and club will be back.

It's telling that I've missed out quite a bit here cos didn't want it to become too banter orientated and wanted to focus on results etc.