The 11 worst Sunderland players of the 21st century - including ex-Everton and Chelsea talents

Since the turn of the millennium, there have been large swathes of time during which supporting Sunderland has felt like some convoluted cosmic punishment for terrible atrocities committed in a past life. People will often reveal to you which football club they support with the suffix of an ironically cheeky, 'For my sins', but where the Black Cats are concerned, there may actually be some truth to the platitude.

Of course, not everything has been awful all of the time - and certainly the past couple of years have marked a notable upturn in fortunes for the Mackems - but when things have been bad they have been despondently wretched.

With that in mind, and in the spirit of self-flagellation, we've picked out a starting XI of the worst players to pull on the famous red and white jersey since the beginning of the 21st century. And just remember, folks, if your personal bugbear isn't here, it's probably because there were loads and loads and loads to choose from...

Lee Camp

Do you know how bad you've got to be to keep the likes of Jason Steele and Kelvin Davis out of this side? Let me tell you, dear reader, pretty bloody bad. Lee Camp might as well have been a hologram for all of the impact and goalkeeping resistance that he displayed during his stint at the Stadium of Light, and the mere utterance of his name is still enough to make Mackems everywhere shudder.

Donald Love

The man with a name like a Grand Theft Auto side character (genuinely, look it up), Love arrived on Wearside as one of several ill-fated signings during Sunderland's unceremonious Premier League death rattle. Insipid rather than offensively bad, it is almost incredible that he was once a hotly-tipped member of Manchester United's academy system.

Papy Djilobodji

When Papy Djilobodji went AWOL for a while during the summer of 2018, there was a strong argument to be made for it being a blessing in disguise. The Senegalese defender was consistently useless during his time in the North East, and when he did eventually pop up at the Academy of Light again, failing a fitness test in the process, it was almost a relief for all parties to see his contract terminated.

Joleon Lescott

Having just endured a miserable stint in Greece, Lescott was handed an inexplicable lifeline by David Moyes in 2017... and proceeded to do absolutely nothing with it. After making just two appearances for the club, Lescott hung up his boots, and was thus consigned to a long list of dreadful recruitment choices made during Moyes' catastrophic tenure.

Laurens De Bock

The League One years were an unrelentingly grim time to be a Sunderland fan, and the trauma of them still rears its ugly head when you least expect it. You can be casually going about your day, quite contentedly, when all of a sudden - BANG - you remember that Laurens De Bock made 10 appearances for the club between September 2019 and the January of the following year. How did that happen? Why did that happen? What is the meaning of this pallid existence through which we all must toil? Still, if there was one beneficiary of De Bock's Wearside sojourn, it is Callum McFadzean, who misses out on this team by the grace of the Belgian alone.

James McFadden

Once upon a time, before the hair transplants, James McFadden used to voluntarily sport a little Jedi rat tail. It is somewhat fitting, therefore, that all memories of his time with Sunderland have been wiped entirely clean, as if the whole fanbase has been subjected to a simultaneous mind trick. Three appearances, no goals, no trace of him ever being there.

Jack Rodwell

Truly one of the biggest heels in Sunderland's recent history, the former Everton midfielder played 76 times for the Black Cats before transforming himself into the hammiest of pantomime villains by refusing to leave the club despite being on astronomical Premier League wages in a cash-strapped Championship squad. In many respects, Rodwell represents something of a moral litmus test; technically he did nothing wrong by seeing out his contract in the North East, but if you think what he did was even remotely okay then I despair of you.

Didier Ndong

Quite a few names could slot in alongside Rodwell in the heart of midfield, such has been the monstrous ineptitude of Sunderland's recruitment strategy during the better part of the past decade, and to that end (dis)honourable mentions must go to the likes of Cabral and Darren Gibson, who were, at best, ineffectual and, at worst, downright detrimental to the Black Cats' survival ambitions. But based purely on the fact that he still remains the club's record signing to this day, we simply have to give the nod to Didier Ndong. Whatever possessed Sunderland to sign him, especially when Yann M'Villa was readily available, is beyond the comprehension of mortal man.

Ricky Alvarez

Ricky Alvarez might have been an alright player, in fairness. We'll never really know for sure because he was injured for most of his time at Sunderland, but it was the subsequent legal battle that followed his doomed loan spell which secures him a spot in midfield here. After a messy tangle in the courts, the Black Cats were ordered to pay a combined £14 million to Alvarez himself and his parent club Inter Milan for a player who they never owned, and who contributed just one goal in 17 outings.

Danny Graham

Danny Graham had two stints with Sunderland, and either one was bad enough to justify his inclusion in this XI. Just two goals in 59 appearances, and one of those came against Aston Villa's U23s in the EFL Trophy. Utterly utterly dire.

Milton Nunez

So bad that there were rumours Sunderland had accidentally signed the wrong player. The striker made just one appearance in red and white before being offloaded to Uruguayan outfit Nacional beneath a cloud in infamy. Incredibly, he didn't officially retire until 2020, when he made his last outing for Honduran side Victoria at the grand old age of 47.