Bradford City and Sunderland will share mutual Charlie Wyke feeling | OneFootball

Charlie Wyke was a prolific goalscorer for both Bradford City and Sunderland

Sunderland and Bradford City seem worlds apart now – with the Black Cats are enjoying their third consecutive season at Championship level following promotion from League One in 2022 and currently on course for a return to the Premier League.

On the other hand, the beginning of the 2024/25 Football League season marked Bradford's sixth consecutive League Two campaign after they suffered relegation from the third tier in 2019. Graham Alexander's side are hoping to return to the third tier this term, however, and are in the play-off mix.

It seems difficult to believe now that the two clubs locked horns during the 2018/19 League One season, although while the Black Cats landed a play-off spot that year, the Bantams finished bottom of the table and are yet to bounce back.

While the North East outfit and their West Yorkshire counterparts don't boast much in common nowadays, what both sets of supporters can agree on is that they enjoyed the services of striker Charlie Wyke during their respective spells in League One in recent years.

Wyke was a top striker for both the Bantams and the Black Cats

The forward is a Middlesbrough academy product, but he never made an appearance at senior level for his hometown club and instead endured loan spells with Kettering Town, Hartlepool United and AFC Wimbledon throughout the early 2010s.

But it was not until he made a permanent switch to Carlisle United in January 2015 that the target man established his prolific tendencies.

During the latter half of the 2014/15 League Two campaign, Wyke produced a decent return of six goals and one assist in just 17 appearances and established a sturdy platform which he would eventually build from.

He then went on to score 15 goals in 38 appearances across all competitions for the Cumbrian outfit during the subsequent 2015/16 season, including 12 goals in 34 fourth-tier outings, which he further complemented by creating two assists.

But the forward's most impressive Carlisle days were still yet to come as he bagged an impressive 14 goals in 26 League Two appearances during the first half of the 2016/17 season.

Such prolific form in front of goal was enough to convince the Bantams, then of League One, to secure his services in January 2017, and the deal proved to be a stroke of genius from the West Yorkshire side.

Wyke adjusted phenomenally well to life in the third tier and scored seven goals as well as making three assists in 19 appearances during the latter half of the 2016/17 season.

His efforts helped fire the Bantams to the 2017 League One play-off final, where they would ultimately fall to a 1-0 defeat at the hands of Millwall, courtesy of a late Steve Morison goal.

And while Bradford's performance levels would drop during the 2017/18 season which followed their Wembley loss, as they finished 11th, Wyke was as good as ever before as he produced a remarkable return of 15 goals and seven assists in 40 third-tier outings.

These impressive numbers had caught the eye of Sunderland and captured his signature for a reported fee of £1m during the summer of 2018 following their relegation from the Championship.

Initially, Wyke struggled to hit the ground running at the Stadium of Light, as he scored just four goals in 27 2018/19 League One outings, but his loss was certainly felt at Valley Parade, as the Bantams were relegated to League Two during the spring of 2019.

Then, while the Black Cats finished just one point shy of the play-off positions following the 2019/20 third-tier season, which was cut short due to Covid-19, the forward had produced another somewhat underwhelming return of five goals in 27 league appearances.

However, it wasn't long until the Black Cats faithful would feel the same sort of affection towards Wyke as that of the Bantams supporters, as he produced his best-ever season to date by scoring 26 goals in 45 League One outings during the 2020/21 season, in which the North East outfit landed a top-six spot, but lost out to Lincoln City in the play-off semi-finals.

The forward would go on to join Wigan Athletic in the summer of 2021, where he sadly suffered a cardiac arrest during a training session the following November.

Unfortunately, the ex-Bantams and Black Cats talisman would never manage to show the Latics the same kind of form he had displayed at his former clubs following his recovery.

Both the Bantams and Black Cats found adequate Wyke replacements

While Wyke was a successful forward for the Bantams as well as the Black Cats, both clubs went on to find goalscorers who were able to fill his boots.

Following Wyke's Stadium of Light exit, former Black Cats hotshot Ross Stewart took on the goalscoring mantle and succeeded with flying colours.

In fact, Stewart would even go one better than his predecessor as his 26 goals in 39 League One appearances during the 2021/22 season spearheaded the North East side back to the Championship, and he even scored at Wembley as his side defeated Wycombe Wanderers 2-0 in the 2022 third tier play-off final.

The Scot would then go on to prove his worth at second tier level, as he scored 10 goals and created three assists in 13 appearances during the subsequent campaign, but his latter Sunderland days were plagued by injury before he joined Southampton in 2023.

Meanwhile, the Bantams would not manage to find a true Wyke replacement until January 2021, when they signed Andy Cook initially on loan from Mansfield Town.

Cook scored eight goals in 21 appearances for the West Yorkshire outfit during the second half of the 2020/21 League Two season, before signing permanent terms the following summer.

The forward has subsequently gone on to establish prolific tendencies of his own, and most notably, scored 31 goals across all competitions during the 2022/23 season, before managing a further 19 in 2023/24.

But while the Bantams and the Black Cats went on to enjoy the services of Cook and Stewart respectively, both sets of supporters will share a mutual respect for Wyke's goalscoring exploits and wish him well after his recent awful injury news.