'Incredible': Alex Neil addresses Sunderland spell, Netflix series and Norwich parallels

Alex Neil says he’ll always have great memories of his time at Sunderland after helping the club win promotion from League One.

Neil left Wearside to join Stoke three months after the Black Cats’ play-off final win over Wycombe in 2022 and is now out of work following the Potters’ decision to sack him last December. Neil recently featured in the latest season of Netflix show Sunderland Til’ I Die, showing the club’s promotion from League One, including the final at Wembley and two-legged semi-final against Sheffield Wednesday.

When asked about his time at Sunderland, Neil drew parallels to his Championship promotion with Norwich in 2015, telling BBC Radio Norfolk: “Listen, incredible, and I’ve got nothing but great memories at Sunderland. We lost I think it was our second game against MK Dons at home, and then I think we didn’t lose in 20 matches.

“The story wasn’t too dissimilar to Norwich to be honest. I think the Norwich story, I think we won 17 games out of 23/24. It wasn’t too dissimilar in terms of what we needed to do, we got to the play-off final and were really competent.

“The semi-final against Sheffield Wednesday, although it wasn’t as close rivals as the likes of Ipswich, it was equally tense, two well-matched teams. We managed to find a way to get ourselves through it and go and get promoted. As I say, wonderful club, absolute die-hard fans, great memories.”

When asked about the Netflix cameras, Neil replied: “It’s quite strange because it wasn’t like the first two seasons. The first two seasons, as far as I’m led to believe, the cameras were on site daily, so it became something that you didn’t really notice, hence reasons why people let their guards down and maybe things happened that probably shouldn’t have happened really and got aired.

“Ours was more done in retrospect. It was actually after the game had been played. There were a couple of cameras here and there but it was mainly set-up interviews. There were no cameras set up in the physio room, there were no cameras set up in my office. Thankfully that wasn’t the case when I was there.”