Virtually no football? How Roy Keane as my Sunderland No2 and Super Kev on the coaching staff led to promotion charge

Treat the first Saturday as an unexpected international break, I told myself...we weren’t playing the following Saturday anyway due to Bury’s expulsion from league and the week after that we’d have probably have rearranged our game with Southend because of international call-ups.

This sentiment was all well and good but after a little over two weeks without football, I found myself getting increasingly wound up over an elaborate game of, ‘my computer generated data is superior to the AI computer generated data.’

I’d downloaded Football Manager 2020 on my mobile, just two days previously and after guiding Sunderland to the League One title and Leasing.com Trophy in my first season, I was feeling rather pleased with myself.

With Roy Keane cracking the whip as my assistant manager and Kevin Phillips on the coaching staff, it truly was sending me into nostalgia overdrive.

I just needed to appoint Darren Williams as Director of Applauding The Fans, reinstate Kevin Ball in his previous role at the AOL and get Niall Quinn to launch a takeover and we really have got the band back together.

Further success was to follow at the start of the next season and I was riding relatively high in sixth place, when I got offered the Manchester United job, staggeringly they were in the bottom three of the Premier League and had just lost five on the bounce.

I was offered a transfer budget in excess of £100million and an objective of qualifying for Europe...tempting, but as a proud local lad, I felt duty-bound to remain on Wearside and try and guide us back to the promised land of annual top flight relegation battles.

Just a few virtual weeks later and my job was described as ‘at risk’ after I had a solitary win over Mansfield Town in the Carabao Cup to show for my efforts over the next six games.

At least I am faring slightly better than one of my friends in our group chat, which has become something of a Football Manager-related ideas and therapy group.

The friend in question, who will remain nameless, was dismissed as Sunderland manager in November of his first season before rocking up at Grimsby almost six months later.

Unfortunately for him, the Lincolnshire-based outfit had to win every game in order to avoid relegation, he lost his opening match in charge by a goal to nil and was sacked before he’d even experienced 24-hours in the Mariners dugout.

Who would be a manager, eh?

If you thought this was enough virtual football for one night, you would be very much mistaken, as I watched a live stream of a complete stranger representing Sunderland AFC on FIFA in the Quaran-Team cup

A defeat and I would consider the competition a sad waste of time, but if we were to win the tournament then I propose an open top bus parade along Roker Seafront, once this virus all blows over.

The Quaran-Team dream was still alive after a Lynden Gooch double secured a 2-0 win over Birmingham City...take that Lee Camp.

It came to an abrupt end, however, Sunderland crashing out of the virtual competition thanks to a 10-0 thrashing by Dutch side Fortuna Sittard.

Ah well, back to Football Manager and my promotion bid...