Wembley hero Tommy Watson officially departs Sunderland for Brighton

The latest North East sport headlines, from Daniel Wales. 04/06/25

Transcript

00:00Young Sunderland winger Tommy Watson has made his move to Brighton & Hove Albion official now,

00:07completing the transfer to the south coast from the Stadium of Light.

00:10Watson was Sunderland's hero at Wembley as they won promotion via the play-off final,

00:16backed the Premier League for the first time since 2017, scoring in additional time to send the Black Cats up.

00:22But following a contract signed midway through last season, Watson has now gone to Brighton.

00:28It's absolutely true and true, the Sunderland fan, being at the club that was five, six years of age.

00:35I think we're going to celebrate a lot of the night, as you can see.

00:38I think that was my last kick as a Sunderland player, to be fair.

00:42So yeah, we'll see three kids in the Premier League next year, all my family were here today.

00:46I think it's where the club deserved to be, an absolute monster of the club, deserved to be in the frame.

00:53Playing against them next year?

00:54Yeah, can't wait for that.

00:56Tell me when you got the ball.

00:58When you got the ball at the edge of the box, I presume you only had one throw in your head.

01:01Yeah, I think that's my game, positive and direct.

01:04Fair enough.

01:05Yeah, use the defenders, use it around them and it's so tough for the key when you do that.

01:11And Newcastle United head coach Eddie Howe has spoken of the benefits of his side qualifying for the Champions League,

01:17as opposed to the Europa League or Conference League.

01:20Yeah, I think it is important.

01:23I don't think it's the be-all and end-all.

01:27I think football and football players think slightly differently to that.

01:30I think the financial is still number one, you know, in a sense of a player will always, in my experience, look at that.

01:39Of course, there's loads of other things, but I'm talking purely when you're talking about a transfer.

01:43Financials are so important.

01:45But the power of the Champions League and the pull of the Champions League is huge.

01:49We can't get away from that.

01:50The excitement that this will bring for the people here.

01:55And of course, it's a selling point for us now.

01:57It's an opportunity for us to sell that dream to future players that might be considering coming to us.

02:02As I said, we've got to get the financials right.

02:04We've got to get every other aspect of trying to sign players here right.

02:12And hopefully we can do that.

02:13We've got to get the financials right.