On This Day (27 September 2002): Peter Reid comes out fighting as the pressure mounts

Yesterday at 01:00 AM

On the eve of a game against Aston Villa, Reid was facing the biggest challenge of his Sunderland career.

From the moment Peter Reid strode into Roker Park and kept us up back in 1995, he'd been the man. The boss. Over the next seven years, he ran the club from top to bottom, and turned us from second tier relegation candidates to European hopefuls.

However, after those first two Premiership seasons, in which we finished seventh on both occasions, Reid struggled to maintain the momentum and confidence that had been a hallmark of the team for four seasons – and a string of poor signings saw us survive – officially at least – on the last day of the 2001-02 season.

There had been calls for Reid's head from some during the second half of that campaign – the horrible, divisive Reid In/Reid Out t-shirts sold by A Love Supreme doing little to quell the growing discontent.

Although Reid had been backed by Bob Murray with a sizeable transfer budget of around £20-30m that summer, the signings he made didn't seem to improve the squad one bit. Quinny had gone into semi-retirement, appointed player-coach and reduced to making bit-part appearances from the bench, while his replacement – Tore Andre Flop – stumbled about looking like football was a completely new experience.

The 02-03 season had actually started okay. An opening day draw at Blackburn had been followed by a narrow home defeat to Everton, a win away at Leeds and a home draw with Manchester United (the McAteer/Keane clash).

Five points from four games wasn't a disaster by any stretch, however a vocal minority of the support wasn't happy, and the steady start had done little to appease them.

Three consecutive defeats – away at Boro, at home to Fulham and away at Newcastle – cranked the pressure right up, and our next game, at home to Graham Taylor's Aston Villa, had the feeling of a must win.

Rumours circulated that Reid had been ordered to stay away from the training ground by Bob Murray, leaving the team's preparation to Quinn and Adrian Heath. However, on the eve of the game Reid – in typical fashion – came out fighting.

I've been away watching a couple of games. I has a chat with the chairman on Sunday and said I was going to.

The reserves played at Bury, which is near my family home, so I thought I'd stay down there and catch that and pick up another game on Tuesday.

There's no big deal. Believe it or not, I've got a mobile phone, and I know how to use that phone, so I kept in touch with Mr Heath and Mr Quinn to see how the lads were doing.

Sometimes, for a manager, it's good to get away, and it does the players good to get away.

The derby defeat at St James – more pertinently, the manner of the derby defeat at ST James, had raised concern levels. The team looked poor – disjointed and lacking in drive, motivation and character, which was the last thing you'd expect from a Peter Reid side.

The manager had 'ripped through' the team after the 2-0 defeat over the river, and said:

I was emotional, but it's not a thing I did lightly. I felt it was the necessary thing to do. We all get a bit of criticism every now and again. I've spoken to them. What's been said has been said, what's done is done. We need to kick on from here.

I have my days when I'm down like anybody else, and Saturday I'm not going to tell anybody any lies, I was absolutely gutted, sick.

But there's no use in moping about. You've got to go out there and fight, and I've always been a fighter.

For the game against Villa the following date, changes aplenty were mooted, with letters to the Sunderland Echo demanding summer signings Thomas Myhre, David Bellion and Nicolas Medina were handed starts.

As it was, the following day, it was Bellion who was in for the injured Kevin Phillips, who was the surprise selection – and it was a good call, too, as he netted the only goal of the game, giving us eight points from eight games.

In the midweek, we beat Cambridge 7-0 in the League Cup, and went down 3-1 to Arsenal at Highbury, which bizarrely was deemed enough to give Reid his cards.

Hindsight is wonderful, but Reid's sacking wasn't universally popular – far from it. He wasn't perfect, but he'd done a stunningly good job all told, and after being backed in the transfer market, it was a poor decision to get rid of him at that point. It would have been more understandable to part ways in the summer if it was going to happen.

David O'Leary seemed like the most likely replacement for Reid, however we all know what happened next, and in the 30 games that followed under Howard Wilkinson and then Mick McCarthy, we only managed to get another 11 points.

Say what you want about Reid, but we'd never have gone down in the manner we did if he'd stayed in charge.