Danny Graham lifts the lid on life at Sunderland under Paolo Di Canio - and the bizarre rules he implemented

Graham joined the Black Cats in a £5million deal in January 2013, having proven prolific at former clubs Swansea City, Watford and Carlisle United.

But he failed to recapture that form at the Stadium of Light, scoring just once after his big-money move to Wearside.

So why did things fail to click for Graham?

Speaking to BBC Radio Cumbria, the striker opened up on his tough spell with the Black Cats – but couldn’t quite put his finger on why he couldn’t find the net at Sunderland.

“For whatever reason it just didn’t work out,” he admitted.

“It wasn’t for a lack of trying, it just didn’t work out.

“I’m obviously gutted about that because I was back up in the North East and I wanted to do well.

“I was there for three and a half years and I was out on loan a lot. There were three or four different managers and it was a tough time in my career, to be honest.

“I had Martin O’Neill sign me, within a couple of games he’d been sacked.

“Gus Poyet, Di Canio, Dick Advocaat - every one of them put me in the under-23 dressing room. And every one of them, by the end of it, had played me in the first-team.

“It wasn’t for the lack of trying, they could see what I was trying to do in training and that I was applying myself.

“There’s nothing I can say that will justify it. I was signed for £5million and I didn’t do well - and I can’t say why.”

It’s the time spent under Di Canio that stands out in Graham’s mind – albeit not for the right reasons.

“He came in and we all sat around and he’s barking out these orders.

“We were all looking round and you could see the lads thinking ‘what is going on here’. I remember we went outside and our first pitch session was something like thirty pitch strides off the bounce, and we were like ‘wow’.

“To be fair, he did a good job and he kept us up.

“But the way he used to go on sometimes in training and the way he used to speak to some of the lads was something I had never seen before. I’m not surprised he didn’t last very long.”

One of Di Canio’s more infamous decisions was his call to banish tomato ketchup from the training ground.

But Graham revealed that his bizarre control of the player’s diets didn’t end there – with the Sunderland squad forced to eat like their manager during a pre-season trip to Italy.

“He banned everything - ketchup, everything.

“We went to Italy for nine days and we had to eat the pasta that came out. There was no variety or anything - whatever he had, we had.

“There were no sauces, nothing. It was certainly different.”