With eight games remaining of the Championship season and Sunderland sitting in 12th in the very definition of mid-table mediocrity, it seems highly likely that the Black Cats’ campaign will fizzle out in dull fashion.

Of course, there’s still a mathematical chance we could get in the play-offs – but with a 13-point deficit to make up and teams above us like Cardiff and Middlesbrough putting decent runs together, there’s a lot of sides to get past.

While previous columns have warned that we could be dragged into a relegation battle, it still feels very unlikely.

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Below us, there’s Millwall and Swansea showing any kind of intention of climbing the table, alongside Sheffield Wednesday whose run of form may drag themselves out of the drop zone at the expense of Birmingham City or even QPR, who were good value on their 0-0 draw on Wearside last weekend.

Something mad might happen. But it probably won’t, and our season will probably be decided well before the final game of the season – though facing Sheffield Wednesday on the last day will ensure we’ll be taking part in whatever the opposite of a dead rubber is.

But to find a season where there was nothing realistically on the agenda for Sunderland – no relegation, no play-offs, no cup competitions – was 30 years ago. Three decades.

Every other season after that, there was something to fight for right to the end of the campaign – for better, or for worse.

Most recently, in League One, we finished in the play-offs on three out of the four seasons we spent there, excluding the 2019-20 season which all the clubs voted to end early owing to the threats posed by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Wycombe, of course, famously voted to end the season but then roused themselves sufficiently to play in the play-offs, decided by the points per game total of each side. But that’s an argument for another day. Still bitter.

We crashed through the Championship in 2017-18, and even though our fate was decided before that hilarious final-day victory against promoted Wolves, we still had a chance of staying up until as late as April.

Before that, there was our decade-long stay in the Premier League, which, of course, was peppered with against-all-odds relegation battles.

But there was some kind of stability, if not for a brief time. We finished 10th in 2010-11 without ever looking like being relegated. However, there was a chance of getting into Europe still alive as late as the April of that season.

Crucially, the higher you’d finish up the Premier League, the more money the clubs would get. Finishing in 10th as opposed to 13th would have netted the club - at the time - around £5m more in prize money. So, in terms of dead rubbers, they didn’t really exist in the top flight.

Before that era – where we spent the longest time in one division in fairly recent history – we roller-coastered between the Premier League and the second tier. But the yardstick of Sunderland mediocrity was 1994.

While it was an exciting time to be a teenager – Britpop was just kicking off, there was an incredible rave counter-culture, jeans were baggy enough to fit three people – watching Sunderland was like a punishment.

In 1993-94, Sunderland finished 12th under Mick Buxton, the replacement for Terry Butcher who had been sacked after his side slid into the drop zone despite starting the season with hopes of promotion.

Buxton was a dour man who never seemed to be delighted to be managing Sunderland. Anecdotally, people close to the club at the time said in fact he’d rather have been down at the allotment than working with the likes of Gary Bennett, Phil Gray and Andy Melville.

And that reflected on the team. A beige, dull, defensive side that, despite steadying the ship in the latter part of the season, never looked like doing much else.

It was a time made worse by the fact that Newcastle United were undergoing their mini-revolution under Kevin Keegan where they’d finish third in the Premier League having romped their way to promotion the season earlier.

The free-spending Magpies were in direct contrast to Sunderland, not spending that much, not doing anything spectacular.

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Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Things would get worse before they got better. In 1994-95, Buxton’s side didn’t just flirt with relegation, it took it out for a slap-up meal. But Peter Reid came in, and promotion the next season followed.

The beauty of football is that better things are always around the corner. But right now, there’s a distinct feeling that we just have to get through this slump and hope beyond hope that those good days will come back again.