Clubs from Spain, who top Uefa’s rankings table of the most successful nations, will have four teams in the Champions’ League, along with Italy and Germany.The top two finishers in each of those countries will qualify for the competition proper. The third and fourth-placed teams will enter the competition in the third (final) qualifying round.France (fourth in Uefa’s rankings table), England (fifth) and the Netherlands (sixth) will each have three teams in the Champions’ League, two of whom will qualify automatically England has three teams in this season’s tournament.. “No disrespect to Sunderland who have gone second,” said Gary Lineker, turning to the Match of the Day panel. “But wasn’t Joe Cole impressive?” Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson agreed that, yes, Cole had been sublime, and that ended the analysis of the game that confirmed Sunderland as Manchester United’s nearest challengers. “No disrespect to Sunderland who have gone second,” said Gary Lineker, turning to the Match of the Day panel. “But wasn’t Joe Cole impressive?” Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson agreed that, yes, Cole had been sublime, and that ended the analysis of the game that confirmed Sunderland as Manchester United’s nearest challengers.
There has been grudging respect rather than disrespect. Having seen his team lose a league game to the Wearsiders for only the second time since Alf Ramsey rather than the watching Sven Goran Eriksson was appointed England manager, Harry Redknapp damned them with praise so faint it was hard to register.After pointing out that his side had lost to “two crap goals”, the West Ham manager added: “If Peter Reid gets them into the Champions’ League, he deserves the manager of the year award.”Sunderland are a good side, hard to break down and beat, but if you are looking at teams who can keep going at the top, then I’d look at Liverpool and Arsenal, who are already there, or Leeds, who could easily string a run together.”If Reid finds this irritating, it is partly his own fault.

When Newcastle were in this position five years ago, Kevin Keegan and his chairman, Sir John Hall, talked endlessly of building a Barcelona on the Tyne and of challenging the European élite. Reid has thus far refused even to discuss the possibility that Sunderland might be competing in next season’s Uefa Cup; his usual method when pressed is to make a joke and move on.Nevertheless, he regrets not having played in Europe after his similarly underrated Everton side won the Cup-Winners’ Cup in 1985, the year of Heysel, and would relish the challenge as a manager.On the wall of his office his assistant, Bobby Saxton, has pinned up a list of all the club’s fixtures with the results he expects from them Needless to say, Sunderland are way ahead of schedule So, too, are the available resources. By 2003 there will be 55,000 seats at the Stadium of Light, one and a half times the capacity of Roker Park, which for all the football fanaticism on Wearside only sold out twice in its final Premiership season.There was, nevertheless, a slight but detectable air of pessimism when Sunderland regrouped last summer for the new campaign. Although finishing seventh, their highest position since 1955, they had spluttered across the line; the second half of the season had brought them just 21 points and a feeling they had been worked out. The tactics of knocking long balls for Niall Quinn to feed to Kevin Phillips were often predictable. Phillips expected to be marked horribly tightly this season; Quinn was a year older at 34 and given that the rest of the team had provided just 13 of Sunderland’s 57 goals, you can understand why the then captain, Steve Bould, began pre-season talking of “consolidation” and “patience”.Phillips has only been slightly less prolific, although what Quinn calls “my old man’s back” has meant he has had to be nursed through most games.But for the first time in his managerial career on Wearside, Reid spent big in the summer. An outlay of £10.5m brought him Don Hutchison, who has scored seven times, the Argentina Under-19 captain, Julio Arca, and Emerson Thome, players with flair but all also possessing the one essential quality Reid demands in his players – work-rate.It may be their physical fitness, or it may be the ferocity of what Reid euphemistically calls “my half-time chats” – or as he prefers it “the fact that they never know when they are beaten” – but Sunderland are a side that excel in second halves.

In their last 16 games, they have conceded only five second-half goals and scored 18.Far more tellingly, they give nothing away. Only once in 161 matches dating back four years have Sunderland lost a league game after scoring first, and that was at Elland Road in August 1999 when they had been reduced to 10 men.What is so remarkable about the rise of Sunderland is that it has been marked by regular walkouts by leading players, nearly all of whom have cited a breakdown in their relationship with Reid. Allan Johnston, Michael Bridges and Lee Clark (who had been photographed at the FA Cup final wearing a T-shirt ridiculing his own supporters) were all transfer-listed on the same day in June 1999, a move which their manager fully expected to lead to his sacking if it backfired.Martin Smith, whom Reid regarded as “my most naturally talented player”, had already quit after rejecting a two-year contract while Nicky Summerbee, who is, according to Reid, “the best crosser of the ball in the Premiership after David Beckham”, was this season forced to train alone in a friend’s gym in Manchester before being sold to Bolton. These defections might have crippled other clubs, it seems only to have strengthened Sunderland’s spirit. It has, however, meant an uneasy relationship with the club’s fan-base. In 1996 a group of them released a single, Cheer Up Peter Reid, which reached No 41 in the charts and was probably the most affectionate tribute to a manager by his supporters.They stopped singing it after the club’s relegation the following year, the blame for which was laid squarely at Reid’s door.