Sunderland watched Stewart Donald waste money on attacking flop - he cost £500k per goal | OneFootball

Will Grigg is one of the biggest transfer failures Sunderland have been involved in over recent years

There have been some dark times in the recent history of Sunderland, with the Black Cats going from being an established Premier League side to a League One outfit in the space of two years.

Most people expected a club the size of Sunderland to bounce out of League One straight away, but it didn't work out that way, as they ended up stuck in the third tier for four seasons, which certainly wasn't part of the plan when they went down.

League One was proving to be a tough nut that Sunderland simply couldn't crack, and they were becoming desperate to get out of there as their attendances started to drop and fans began to lose hope that they would ever get back to where they had been prior.

Then Chairman Stewart Donald wanted to take matters into his own hands and he felt that the Black Cats needed a regular goalscorer, and fortunately for them, there was one available at the time, but that deal proved to be an absolute disaster.

Will Grigg was a complete flop for Sunderland

Such was Sunderland's desperation to get the deal done, they made an incredible eight bids for Will Grigg in the winter window of 2018/19 and they did eventually find a resolution in the closing stages of the window.

The Black Cats paid £4m for Grigg, which at the time was a record for a League One player and it was widely assumed that the prolific Wigan Athletic frontman would come in and fire Sunderland to promotion, but that couldn't have been further from what actually happened.

The first few months after signing were the best of Grigg's tragic stay on Wearside, with the Northern Irishman scoring four times in 18 League One appearances as Sunderland reached the play-off final, where they subsequently lost to Charlton.

Incredibly, Grigg only scored four goals outside of those 18 games in the rest of his Sunderland career, which was simply incredible considering he was brought in to be the man who brought with him a raft of goals.

Changes in management certainly didn't help Grigg's cause, but he had proved over a number of seasons that he was good enough to perform at this level, so the only other possible answer to his struggles was that Sunderland simply wasn't the right club for him.

Will Grigg seemed a sure-fire bet to succeed in League One

Grigg was seen as the banker to score goals in League One, as he'd done so for Wigan, MK Dons and Walsall previously, but at Sunderland it simply didn't work out.

There will be few strikers who have ever scored as many goals at League One level as the 116 Grigg has, and in four of his five prior full League One campaigns before moving to the North East, he'd scored at least 19 goals.

All the evidence was there that Donald had invested in a man who was a sure-fire bet to score goals, but instead the eight he did score meant that each of the eight goals Grigg netted for Sunderland cost £500k each.

That's an eye-watering cost per goal, and one that certainly wasn't expected when he made the move, but it has to rank Grigg as one of the biggest transfer disasters in Sunderland's recent history.