"It does feel different this time - I love what this manager is doing." Niall Quinn's words may not be a papal blessing per se, but to Sunderland fans they are the next best thing.
Quinn is rightly accorded legend status on Wearside following his six-year stint as a player, before going on to become part-owner, chairman, and - briefly - manager. He knows the club, the area, and its people upside down and inside out.
And his praise for Alex Neil on the eve of this weekend's League One play-off final against Wycombe Wanderers at Wembley is full-throated. "It would have been lovely to get back up to the Championship quickly last time, but a late, late goal hurt everybody and the club has struggled ever since to reidentify itself," Quinn told ChronicleLive, referrring to the club's 2019 play-off final defeat at the hands of Charlton Athletic.
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"But, lo and behold, in the last few months since Alex Neil has come in, you get the feeling that it is starting to do that. The players are no longer playing with a burden upon them.
"They are playing for each other, they are playing with a passion, and a spirit that has come from nowhere in many respects, but of course it has also come from really good managerial input. Because of that, Sunderland fans can dare to hope again and they can go into this game - even with the terrible record that the club has in these type of matches at Wembley - there is something different about what this man has done in the last two or three months that makes you think they are playing at a different level.
"The late goals that they have scored are no fluke, it's no coincidence that they come time and time again. There's an inner belief within the team, the players are stepping up to the plate and, quietly, the manager has in two or three months probably put the players and the team into a better position than we have seen for a long, long, time.
"Now of course that can fall flat if the guys don't perform tomorrow, but there's nothing there for me to say that we're not going to do ourselves justice as a football club and a football team this weekend, such is the input he has had."
Neil took over in February following the sacking of Lee Johnson, but before his arrival was confirmed there was a massive groundswell of support from Sunderland fans to reappoint Quinn's former Republic of Ireland teammate Roy Keane. Early in his spell as chairman back in 2006, Quinn had brought Keane to the club and the ex-Manchester United great had led Sunderland out of the Championship and back into the Premier League at the first attempt in his first managerial job - as well as livening up proceedings with his steely focus, charisma, and acerbic press conferences.
That made Keane the popular choice this time when Sunderland were seeking similar inspiration but, although he was interviewed for the vacancy, the club plumped for former Norwich City and Preston boss Neil, and it is testament to the job he has done that there has been no sense of 'what if' from supporters. Quinn said: "It wasn't easy for him. He wasn't the preferred media choice, there was a huge interest in the fact that Roy Keane might get the job, Jermain Defoe had just been brought in and he was going to get the goals that got us to the play-offs, but those two things fizzled out.
"What happened instead was that Alex Neil quietly and assuredly has come in and managed this club brilliantly, and it'll be no fluke if he gets this over the line and they find themselves in a better place."
And of Keane, Quinn added: "We'll never forget the impact he had. I say that to people time and time again - he didn't just have an impact on the football club, he had a massive impact on the city.
"Everybody bought into it, everybody believed, players then came in. We didn't have loads of money at the time but it was a period in the club's existence when it was on the up.
"He made the dressing room a far better place to be than it had been for some time. There are different ways of doing that, and Alex Neil has probably found another way of doing it where you are not the centre of attention.
"He has possibly done it through old-fashioned management of individuals, getting them to believe, getting them together as a group and making them play together as they have. Would Roy have done it again? Who knows.
"Certainly we'd have had some craic out of it - there'd have been plenty to write about! It's a great credit to Alex Neil, though, that to come in against that background and in those circumstances, with a mixture of euphoria and tension, he has got the players to believe in themselves.
"I think he'll have them in rip-roaring condition tomorrow. Mentality-wise, the terrible play-off record is nothing to do with them, our fans might worry about it and the Wycombe fans might think 'that gives us a chance, they don't do well here' but I just think that the way Alex Neil has this team, it won't be a factor."
Sunderland's terrible play-off record - six attempts, including three appearances in finals, and no wins - is something of which Quinn needs no reminding. He scored twice in the rollercoaster 1998 second tier play-off final at the old Wembley Stadium, as Sunderland led against Charlton three times before ending up tied at 4-4 after extra-time.
The game went to a penalty shootout, and then to sudden-death before Mickey Gray's spot-kick was saved meaning the Addicks won 7-6 and were promoted to the Premier League. Typically, Quinn's memories of that day centre on the post-match reaction within the dressing room when boss Peter Reid gathered his players and laid the groundwork for a title-winning campaign the following season when Sunderland swept all before them to win promotion with a then-record 105 points.
"Like all professional sportsmen, I took the positives out of days like that," Quinn said, with a wince that quickly breaks into a smile. "Truthfully, my memory of it all boils down to what went on in the dressing room afterwards.
"After we'd sobbed and felt sorry for ourselves and waved to our families in the stands, we made our way back into the dressing room and Peter Reid slammed the door and we got a conversation from every player, the ones who had played, those on the bench, and those that weren't selected. There was a guarantee and a commitment to come together and start the next season from Game One - we didn't give the teams a 10 or 12-game start as we had done that year, which meant we missed out on automatic promotion.
"We made a commitment as a group that we wouldn't go looking for transfers, that we wouldn't blame other people for what had happened, but that when we came back from our holidays we would start again and that was exactly what we did. As a result, we stormed the league, we had it won in April, and finished with 105 points.
"Not only that, we had a couple of great years afterwards, and we finished seventh in the Premier League two seasons in a row and we might have done even better in those years had we not faded after Christmas. The thing about that day at Wembley though, as tough as it was, is that in some ways it might have been the making of us."
While Sunderland have had three unsuccessful play-off campaigns since, losing at the semi-final stage in the second tier in 2004 and in the third tier last season, along with that defeat in the final in 2019, it is still that 1998 final and the image of Reid consoling Gray on the Wembley turf that has come to represent the Black Cats' fortunes in the play-offs. But Quinn hopes that will change tomorrow, and that a new image will come to define Sunderland's play-off history - one that sees the team holding aloft the play-off trophy as 46,000 fans decked in red and white celebrate promotion.
"If you take it from the fans' point of view, nobody deserves it more than them," he said. The world is astonished by Sunderland and its supporters.
"The Netflix documentary [filmed in the 2017-18 season when Sunderland were relegated from the Championship, and continued in the 2018-19 campaign when they lost in the play-off final] had one great effect, which is that the world knows how big the football club is and how much it means to the people. Despite the sideshows that went on and the intrusion into the people running the club, the highlighting of mistakes that were made - I'm just so pleased that nobody thought of it in my time! - the fans came out of it as the real heroes at Sunderland.
"It would be lovely for them to not get all wrapped up and scared about this terrible record, but to come down on Saturday full of confidence knowing the manager has a team that can play at a level that is almost without fear. Hopefully he can manage that bad record into the history books, and the fans will have something to celebrate."
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