Robbin Ruiter played just one League One game for Sunderland last season - he'd have been hoping to feature far more regularly in the Eredivisie.
Robbin Ruiter probably couldn’t wait to escape the basket case that is Sunderland Association Football Club over the summer.
Not only did the Dutch goalkeeper make just one league appearance in his final 12 months at the Stadium of Light, that two-year spell on Wearside coincided with the arguably the worst period in the club’s entire 140-year history.
When Ruiter arrived at Sunderland from Utrecht in the summer of 2017, the Black Cats were planning for an immediate return to the Premier League. When he left, returning to Holland with PSV on July, this once great club were set for a second consecutive campaign in the third tier.
A move to PSV, Eredivisie winners three times in the last five years, was far too good to turn down for a ‘keeper who spent much of 2018/19 stuck on the bench during trips to Gillingham, Rochdale and Barnsley.
But Ruiter has spent most of his time at the Phillips Stadium catching splinters rather than shots, finding himself stuck in the dugout once again. He’s played in just three of PSV’s 25 games this season and, even when number one Jeroen Zoet was dropped for the weekend clash with Willem II, manager Mark Van Bommel put his trust in German Lars Unnerstall instead.
And Ruiter isn’t happy after being overlooked once again.
"I'm surprised. We discussed this on Friday and I thought I'd play if Zoet went out of the goal,” Ruitter told Eindhoven Dagblad after PSV’s 2-1 defeat, their sixth game without a win.
With Jon McLaughlin enduring a dramatic fall from grace at Sunderland in recent months, Ruitter might have found game-time easier if he’d stayed at the Stadium of Light.
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