It was August 19, 2022, a sultry summer’s evening on the banks of the Wear, and there was an air of intrigue as we trooped to the Stadium of Light to witness what we all hoped would be a comfortable home victory over perennial Championship strugglers Rotherham United.
Despite a good start to the season with a new-look team, out of nowhere, we’d suddenly hit a pocket of turbulence.
In a classic ‘hero to zero’ gambit, Alex Neil had overseen a promising series of results before buggering off to Stoke City, opting for an early checkout, lobbing the TV out of the window and leaving the contents of his suitcase strewn around the luxury suite on the top floor of the hotel.
After the inevitable fallout and speculation about who would replace Neil, in came Tony Mowbray, with the veteran boss tasked with guiding a young and callow yet talented Sunderland side through its first Championship campaign in five years.
In any event, the game was won comfortably, with Jack Clarke and Ross Stewart in particular proving too hot for the Millers to handle, yet it was the unveiling of four new signings – Abdoullah Ba, Jewison Bennette, Edouard Michut and Amad – that caught the attention at half-time.
Fresh-faced and bright-eyed, the “teens in jeans”, as they were christened, were the embodiment of our recruitment strategy at the time: sign (or loan) them young, give them space to develop and hope they’d be able to play a role in an eventual promotion back to the top flight.
OK, it didn’t exactly work out as planned in the final analysis, but there was no shame in trying, and you could argue that the lessons learned were valuable during the seasons that followed. Want to bed in youngsters and try to play a dynamic, positive style of football? Go for it, but give them some experienced lads to learn from and to depend on when things get tough.
And now, Ba finds himself in limbo, with one protracted move having fallen through and seemingly no guarantees beyond that. This time last week, the curtain seemed like it was about to fall on another chapter of the recent Sunderland story, with another exponent of Mowbray’s gloriously freewheeling style of play red and white no more… but it hasn’t.
Of course, Michut, Amad and Bennette are all long gone, but Ba is the final link to those days and the last piece of a puzzle that had the capacity to frustrate and excite you in equal measure. He’s had plenty of critics and no shortage of supporters during his time at Sunderland, but as he becomes the latest fringe player to face up to an uncertain future, it does feel somewhat melancholy.
The winger (perhaps somewhat naively, I once saw him as a prospective number ten – mark that particular opinion down as “ambitious yet nonsensical”) isn’t a bad footballer by any stretch of the imagination.
Instead, he’s just a wildly inconsistent one; a player whose feet seem inclined to do one thing while his brain opts for another, and although those shortcomings were tolerated by Mowbray and latterly Mike Dodds and Michael Beale, the altogether “non-vibes”-based approach forged under Régis Le Bris meant that Ba’s days as a first-team regular on Wearside were numbered when the rebuild began in the summer of 2024.
Has Ba been a successful signing or another Kristjaan Speakman-overseen gamble that didn’t quite pay off?
It’s tricky to say, in all honesty. It’s fifty-fifty, borderline, neither here nor there. He racked up enough appearances to make an impact during those early seasons back in the second tier, but also never made himself undroppable in the process.
Flashes of talent during his maiden campaign on Wearside – including a well-taken goal at Norwich – and a decent 2023/2024 campaign, during which he found himself thrust into the role usually occupied by Patrick Roberts and chipped in with a handful of goals and assists, offered us a glimpse of what he was capable of, and it would be wholly incorrect to say that he couldn’t play at all.
On the other hand, he never got it together for long enough, and he seldom made you believe that he was blessed with the kind of single-mindedness that players who go far always possess.
As every football fan knows, ability alone isn’t enough.
You need to combine that with the drive for self-improvement and an almost fanatical desire to be the best you can be. Sunderland most definitely have that now in the shape of the likes of Enzo Le Fée, Chris Rigg and Chemsdine Talbi, but whether Ba simply lost the hunger and consequently his direction following his first two seasons, only he knows, and it would be churlish not to wish him well as he navigates this tricky period of his career.
There was always the possibility of the decks being cleared this summer, and that’s most definitely been the case recently. Despite this hiccup, the decision to part ways with Ba has clearly been taken, and he’ll hopefully secure a move that suits him, but it does highlight how far we’ve come and the level we’re now operating at.
As one winger in Romaine Mundle looks set to be given the chance to reignite his Wearside career, Ba’s prospects are far more uncertain, and I really hope he finds a place where he can settle down, recapture some positivity, and enjoy regular football again.