In the seventh episode of Netflix hit Sunderland ’Til I Die, the opening sequence flicks to a shot of a familiar face struggling to mask feelings of deep frustration.
When I came here in the summer, I had aspirations of this club going back to the Premier League and it’s been the exact opposite,” sighs Aiden McGeady, his Glaswegian accent as sharp as it was when he first came onto the scene as a teenager at Celtic.
There’s a world-weary tone to his 2018 observations as he goes on to hammer the manager Chris Coleman, insinuating that his demeanour was contributing to the slide towards relegation.
“I’ve had managers before who come in and go crazy. He just kind of comes in and it’s, ‘We could have done this better, right, sound, move on’. It’s just kind of an acceptance of, ‘That’s OK’. You come into training a couple of days later and everyone is laughing and joking and it’s like, we’ve just been beaten 3-0 at home, you know.”
It’s a perfect sequence to shine a light on a story of McGeady’s career, reflecting a view that would be shared by many people that have shared a dressing-room with him. Cranky? Yes. Opinionated? Yes. Hard work for a manager? Yes.
Yet it’s entirely possible that it all comes from a good place, a burning desire to be better even if he hasn’t always articulated that point in the right way.
Right now, McGeady is in the process of writing a new chapter in his Sunderland tale and it might just deliver a happy ending and a degree of vindication. As it nears the final stretch, a feature of this Football League season is that two of the highest-performing Irishmen are old-timers.
Wes Hoolahan (38) looks set to inspire Cambridge to promotion from League Two and McGeady – who turned 35 earlier this week – has emerged from the doghouse to inspire a Sunderland side that sits third in the League One table and would be top if they won their two games in hand.
McGeady has been the driving force in their resurgence under new manager Lee Johnson, an assist machine that has also chipped in with the odd goal. He’s still on a legacy contract rumoured to be worth in the region of £30,000-a-week to him – which is insane money by the standards of League One – but that was more of an issue when he was frozen out by previous manager Phil Parkinson.
If he can get Sunderland back to the second tier, the wages will become a footnote and there’s even chatter about a new contract which was unthinkable a year ago when he was sent on loan to Charlton because Parkinson didn’t want him around the place after a losing run.
McGeady subsequently detailed their conversation in blunt terms. “He (Parkinson) said, ‘I feel you’re too negative for the group’,” he recalled, “I was like, ‘Gaffer, we’ve won two out of 15 mate. Forgive me for not jumping through hoops.’ I was absolutely raging but part of me thought he’ll get the sack soon and I’ll just hang on.”
That’s experience. He was proved right eventually, although it took the guts of a year for that scenario to come to fruition. It was a damaging time for his reputation. Ex-Sunderland team-mate Lewis Morgan appeared to back up Parkinson’s stance by describing McGeady as the most “ruthless” character he’d come across in football, explaining how team-mates were afraid of him.
He recalled a midweek game against lowly third-tier opposition where McGeady eviscerated his colleagues for a below-par display, suggesting they would never operate at a higher level.
The man himself took issue with Morgan’s version of events, telling the popular Scottish football podcast ‘Open Goal’ that he was merely telling the group that if any of them had ambitions of going further in the game then they’d need to cope better with the pressure of a home match with Accrington Stanley.
Clearly, there were contrasting stances on the intentions behind the message he delivered. What cannot be disputed now is that a happy McGeady is a positive football influence, showing why he operated in elite company at his peak. That aforementioned ‘Open Goal’ podcast provided a 90-minute journey through the highs and lows of his career.
There aren’t many players in League One who can speak of encountering Messi and Ronaldo on multiple occasions, reflect on a stay in Russia playing in the Champions League, or can spin yarns about an unlikely friendship with Samuel Eto’o at Everton, a high-profile fellow sub who didn’t even know the name of the assistant manager beckoning him over
McGeady also has a treasure trove of tales from his formative days at Celtic under Martin O’Neill, catching the tail end of a glorious period with big characters such as Henrik Larsson, Neil Lennon and Chris Sutton in the dressing-room.
He learned a few lessons about looking after himself with Artur Boruc getting the better of the upstart in a brawl in the shower that spilled over from a dressing-room dispute. The combative streak in McGeady was there from the outset and while O’Neill spoke affectionately about the narkiness, other managers were troubled by it.
But it’s possible that a theme running through the winger’s career was the niggling sense that he was never quite delivering on his potential, an opinion that was aired frequently in Ireland during the course of a 93-cap career.
He arrived at Sunderland off the back of a loan spell at Preston that hinted at a revival but any hopes of a Premier League comeback were quickly dashed.
Evidently, that ate away at him but it’s possible he has now reached the stage where he has come to terms with where he is and is trying to make the best of his remaining days.
Without the weight of the world on his shoulders, he has thrived.
Former Ireland international Stephen Elliott watches Sunderland regularly and actually felt Stephen Kenny should have drafted him in for the March window, even though his last appearance was the 5-1 loss to Denmark in 2017.
“I feel his quality would have helped Stephen transition into his new style,” argues Elliott, who has said McGeady is League One’s standout player.
Kenny recently gave the impression that the ship had sailed, and a recall for McGeady without any certainty that he would be used would possibly be of limited benefit.
Triggering that debate risks deflection from a laudable Sunderland redemption.
The cynic could point out that an expiring bumper contract, and the likelihood of a substantial pay cut, may be a factor in the revival.
But the flip side of that is that over a decade on from his lucrative relocation to Spartak Moscow, he’s still out there earning while other members of his generation have retired with their money made. There’s a few more scraps left in this story.
