On 5 December 1908, Sunderland achieved their highest ever league win, against north-east rivals Newcastle United. They won the game 9–1; Billy Hogg and George Holley each scored hat-tricks.The club won the league again in 1913,but lost their first FA Cup final 1–0 to Aston Villa, in a very tough loss.This was the closest the club has come to winning the league title and the FA Cup in the same season.Two seasons later the First World War brought the league to a halt. After the league's resumption, Sunderland came close to winning another championship in the 1922–23 season, when they were runners-up to Liverpool.They also came close the following season, finishing third, four points from the top of the league.The club escaped relegation from the First Division by one point in the 1927–28 season despite 35 goals from Dave Halliday. The point was won in a match against Middlesbrough, and they finished in fifteenth place. Halliday improved his goal scoring to 43 goals in 42 games the following season,an all-time Sunderland record for goals scored in a single season.
The club's sixth league championship came in the 1935–36 season,and they won the FA Cup the following season, after a 3–1 victory against Preston North End at Wembley Stadium.The remainder of the decade saw mid-table finishes, until the league and FA Cup were suspended for the duration of the Second World War. Some football was still played as a morale boosting exercise, in the form of the Football League War Cup. Sunderland were finalists in the tournament in 1942, but were beaten by Wolverhampton Wanderers.
For Sunderland, the immediate post-war years were characterised by significant spending; the club paid £18,000 (£474 thousand today) for Carlisle United's Ivor Broadis in January 1949. Broadis was also Carlisle's manager at the time, and this is the first instance of a player transferring himself to another club.This, along with record-breaking transfer fees to secure the services of Len Shackleton and Welsh international Trevor Ford, led to a contemporary nickname, the "Bank of England".The club finished third in the First Division in 1950,their highest finish since the 1936 championship.
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