Jack Clarke Made Sunderland Pay for Letting Him Go, With Interest

Sunderland let Jack Clarke go for £15m in the summer of 2024. On Saturday, in his first meeting with his old club after that deal, he made sure they felt every pound of it, curling home a 90th-minute winner to sink Sunderland 2-1 and hand Gary O’Neil victory in his first competitive match in charge of Ipswich.

Clarke had spent the entire afternoon on the bench, watching a match that swung twice before he ever touched the ball. He came on with the game fading into a draw, and needed one moment to make it his. Sunderland’s Omar Alderete, a £10m signing from Getafe who had otherwise given his side composure at the back all afternoon, played a loose pass straight into Clarke’s path. Clarke did not need a second invitation. He drove forward and curled a finish from 20 yards past the Sunderland goalkeeper, and Portman Road erupted for the one player in an Ipswich shirt with a personal score to settle.

The Move That Set Up the Moment

Clarke’s path from Sunderland to Ipswich was never dressed up as anything other than a good piece of business for both sides at the time. Sunderland banked £15m for a winger who had been a regular performer for them, while Ipswich got a player who has gone on to become one of their most reliable attacking outlets. Neither club could have scripted his first game back at Portman Road against his old side ending with Clarke himself deciding it in the final minute, least of all with a goal created by a Sunderland mistake rather than one of his own trademark darting runs.

The symmetry ran deeper than the scoreline. Sunderland’s own promotion story under Regis Le Bris in 2025 was built on the same kind of late drama that Clarke produced here, the club winning the Championship play-offs with a stoppage-time winner against Sheffield United. On Saturday, that same instinct for a late moment was turned against them by the player they had sold to fund the next stage of their own rebuild.

A Fast, Error-Strewn Afternoon Before Clarke’s Winner

Clarke’s moment was the punctuation mark on a match that had already swung twice. Ipswich named seven new signings in their starting line-up, and one of them, Emersonn, opened the scoring in the 24th minute after Sunderland captain Luke O’Nien’s misplaced pass out from the back handed possession straight to Julio Enciso. O’Nien has made more than 225 appearances for Sunderland after joining from Wycombe in 2018, a career that has brought two promotions and an EFL Trophy win, which made his role in gifting Ipswich the opener a rare afternoon to forget for a player normally trusted with exactly that kind of situation. Enciso, back at Portman Road on a permanent deal after impressing on loan there in Ipswich’s relegation season of 2024-25, squared the ball for Emersonn to slide home his first goal for the club.

Emersonn arrived from Toulouse this summer in a club-record deal worth around £24m plus add-ons, becoming the first Brazilian player in Ipswich’s history after a career that began at Athletico Paranaense, survived an ACL injury and included a spell at Turkish side Goztepe before six goals in Ligue 1 last season persuaded Ipswich to make him their marquee summer arrival. His first goal for the club arrived on the same afternoon Clarke settled the match, giving O’Neil two big-money attacking additions delivering on the same day.

Sunderland responded within 15 minutes through Nilson Angulo, a £17m deadline-day signing from Anderlecht in February who arrived with seven goals and eight assists from his final season in Belgium. Angulo bent a stunning 25-yard free-kick beyond the Ipswich goalkeeper to make it 1-1 heading into half-time, a strike good enough on its own to have settled a lesser occasion.

Chances continued at both ends after the restart. An Abdul Fatawu cross in the 50th minute, from a player who completed a permanent €23.5m move to Ipswich from Leicester City in July after starring for Ghana at this year’s World Cup, drifted fractionally too high for Daizen Maeda, and moments later a second delivery into the area was flicked narrowly wide by Enciso. Maeda joined Ipswich from Celtic in a £10m deal in July, arriving on Portman Road on a three-year contract after helping the Scottish champions to domestic honours and coming through Japan’s run to the last 32 of this year’s World Cup. At the other end, Marcelino Nunez, a £10m arrival from East Anglian rivals Norwich City the previous year, made a timely block to deny Sunderland’s Brobbey, before Enciso produced another mazy run that Emersonn could not quite convert into a third goal.

O’Neil Praises Enciso’s Ethic

Speaking to Sky Sports after the match, O’Neil reflected on the significance of his first win after taking over from Kieran McKenna in the summer. “We had to work hard to win. Sunderland are a good side. We deserved to win. It took the club a long time to win last time in the Premier League so to put one on the board is nice. But one win won’t get us where we need to get to. Everyone is calm. We can get stronger in the next 10 days,” he said.

O’Neil singled out Enciso’s contribution for particular praise, a player he had already coached in France the previous season before their reunion at Portman Road this August in a deal worth more than £26m from Strasbourg. “He was good. That’s why we pushed so hard to get him in. The club were excellent at convincing him to come here. He’s an excellent player. I love special players but they need to do it without the ball, that’s the thing with him, he’s desperate to help the team,” O’Neil said. “For him to put it on a plate for Emersonn shows his ethic. To find a player like him is really rare. We need another 37 performances like that.”

Le Bris: ‘The Result Is a Bit Cruel’

Sunderland manager Regis Le Bris felt his side’s control of possession deserved a better outcome than a defeat settled by a former player’s late strike. “The result is a bit cruel because we dominated the ball but dominating possession doesn’t mean you win the game,” he said. “They were well organised and ready to exploit our turnovers. Now it is about us, we have to show more composure.”

Le Bris took some comfort from Angulo’s equaliser but acknowledged the defeat needed rapid attention before Sunderland’s next fixture. “Our goal was a nice goal, happy for him but it is still a defeat. We will try to analyse quickly this defeat to go forward,” he said.

A First Win to Build On, a Player Who Made a Point

O’Neil inherited a squad shaped entirely by his predecessor. McKenna took Ipswich from League One to the Premier League across successive promotions before stepping down in June, citing a wish to take a break from the game and spend time with his family, and turning down interest from other Premier League clubs including Fulham. O’Neil arrived with Premier League experience of his own, having managed Bournemouth to 15th place in 2022-23 and then Wolves to a 14th-placed finish in his debut season at Molineux, before a spell in charge of Ligue 1 side Strasbourg preceded his appointment at Portman Road in June. Saturday gave him his first meaningful result in the job, built on an aggressive approach that saw Ipswich commit players forward throughout and respond with composure once Sunderland threatened to seize control after Angulo’s equaliser.

But it was Clarke’s afternoon in the end. Emersonn’s first Ipswich goal and Enciso’s creative touches gave the new manager plenty to build on, and Sunderland’s own summer arrivals showed enough in Angulo’s free-kick to suggest their season will not turn on one bad afternoon. Yet none of that will linger the way Clarke’s finish will. A player sold to help fund Sunderland’s rebuild spent 89 minutes on the bench watching his old club before getting the one touch that counted, and made sure his return to Portman Road was remembered for exactly the moment that hurt Sunderland most.