Post by Les on May 5, 2024 12:10:40 GMT
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Sunderland's owners need to put things right during a crucial summer
By Scott Wilson
IT is exactly what Sunderland were hoping to achieve. Act decisively in the first half of the season to dismiss a manager deemed to be underperforming. Identify a young, innovative head coach, with a proven track record of developing young players within the academy set-up of some of Europe’s biggest clubs. Watch as said head coach completely transforms performances and results, enabling the main goal for the season to be achieved on the final day of the campaign. High-performance culture? You bet.
The problem, of course, is that all of that is describing Sheffield Wednesday. Sacking Xisco Munoz? Needed to happen. Bringing in Danny Rohl? A masterstroke. Improvement levels in the second half of the season? Off the scale. For a club with a chequered history of on and off-field decision-making in the last few years, Sheffield Wednesday have got an awful lot right in the last nine months.
Sunderland, on the other hand, has become an exemplar of how a football club should not be run. Sacking Tony Mowbray. Appointing Michael Beale. Sacking Michael Beale. Installing Mike Dodds as interim head coach. Sticking with Mike Dodds as interim head coach even when results were flatlining. Signing strikers who could not score. Refusing to sign anyone with even a modicum of Championship experience. Selling the dressing-room leaders. And that’s before we even get to the debacle of the Black Cats Bar. If it’s been possible to make a wrong decision at any stage this season, Sunderland’s ownership group have done exactly that.
All of which brings us to Saturday, and the final, depressing act of a season that eventually became a footballing form of self-flagellation. Sunderland’s supporters knew exactly what they were going to be putting themselves through when they trudged through the turnstiles at the Stadium of Light, yet remarkably, they kept coming back for more. The only good thing that can be said about the 2023-24 campaign is that it has finally reached its end.
That denouement could hardly have been more fitting, with Sunderland’s players sheepishly emerging from the tunnel a few minutes after the final whistle at the weekend for a ‘lap of appreciation’ in front of stands that had long ago emptied. To their left, Sheffield Wednesday’s jubilant players lapped up the acclaim of a sold-out away section at the top of the North Stand. They didn’t want the afternoon to end. Their opponents couldn’t get away quickly enough.
“We haven't given the fans enough to cheer about, not just in my tenure, but across the entire season,” admitted Dodds, whose spell as interim boss is now mercifully over. “As players and staff, we won't accept another season like that.”
Strong words, but on the evidence of the last six months, could you really trust those in the positions of power at the Stadium of Light to successfully turn things around?
Clearly, the appointment of a new permanent head coach is the first building block that needs to be put into place, and you would like to think that the calamitous end to the season, which ended with Sunderland in 16th position, has focused minds. Will Still? Rene Maric? Paul Heckingbottom? Rohl? Kristjaan Speakman and Kyril Louis-Dreyfus need to get this decision right, but they also need to act decisively now. The longer the current vacuum continues, the harder it will be to start generating positive momentum ahead of next season.
Speakman and Louis-Dreyfus believe that a head coach should be interchangeable, that the structures and philosophies that drive the overarching ‘project’ at the Academy of Light should be strong enough to withstand the upheaval created by a change of boss. The evidence of this season suggests that is nonsense. The identity of the man in charge matters. Get that wrong, and as life under Beale and Dodds has proved, everything else falls apart. Get it right, and as Sheffield Wednesday have shown under Rohl, a parlous situation can quickly be transformed.
Beyond the head-coach appointment, a host of other key decisions are pending. Was Saturday’s late substitution the last we will see of Jack Clarke in a Sunderland shirt? Might Anthony Patterson, surprisingly dropped to the bench for the final game, be following him out of the door? Will the list of incomings once again be dominated by untried youngsters from overseas? Or will Speakman and Louis-Dreyfus finally listen to what Mowbray, Beale and Dodds have all been saying and tweak their transfer approach to bring in some more experienced campaigners? A lot of uncertainty, after a season that brutally exposed both the failings of the current approach and the weaknesses that has created within the current squad.
“In the next seven weeks, actions will speak louder than words,” said Dodds, who watched first-half goals from Liam Palmer and Josh Windass condemn his side to their final defeat of the campaign at the weekend. “Whether that be the next head coach or players coming in or out. I feel like I’ve spoken a huge amount, and in the next seven weeks of the off season and then the six weeks of pre-season, it’s going to be a huge period for the football club, and actions will speak louder than words.”
When last season ended with the pain of a play-off semi-final defeat at Luton Town, there was uncertainty over Mowbray’s future and a sense that some changes were needed. But there was also a strong base to build from, momentum from a successful first season back in the Championship and a strong bond uniting fans, owners, players and club. This time around, there is none of that. Just a group of players wandering aimlessly around an empty stadium. Kyril and Kristjaan, it is over to you…
Sunderland's owners need to put things right during a crucial summer
By Scott Wilson
IT is exactly what Sunderland were hoping to achieve. Act decisively in the first half of the season to dismiss a manager deemed to be underperforming. Identify a young, innovative head coach, with a proven track record of developing young players within the academy set-up of some of Europe’s biggest clubs. Watch as said head coach completely transforms performances and results, enabling the main goal for the season to be achieved on the final day of the campaign. High-performance culture? You bet.
The problem, of course, is that all of that is describing Sheffield Wednesday. Sacking Xisco Munoz? Needed to happen. Bringing in Danny Rohl? A masterstroke. Improvement levels in the second half of the season? Off the scale. For a club with a chequered history of on and off-field decision-making in the last few years, Sheffield Wednesday have got an awful lot right in the last nine months.
Sunderland, on the other hand, has become an exemplar of how a football club should not be run. Sacking Tony Mowbray. Appointing Michael Beale. Sacking Michael Beale. Installing Mike Dodds as interim head coach. Sticking with Mike Dodds as interim head coach even when results were flatlining. Signing strikers who could not score. Refusing to sign anyone with even a modicum of Championship experience. Selling the dressing-room leaders. And that’s before we even get to the debacle of the Black Cats Bar. If it’s been possible to make a wrong decision at any stage this season, Sunderland’s ownership group have done exactly that.
All of which brings us to Saturday, and the final, depressing act of a season that eventually became a footballing form of self-flagellation. Sunderland’s supporters knew exactly what they were going to be putting themselves through when they trudged through the turnstiles at the Stadium of Light, yet remarkably, they kept coming back for more. The only good thing that can be said about the 2023-24 campaign is that it has finally reached its end.
That denouement could hardly have been more fitting, with Sunderland’s players sheepishly emerging from the tunnel a few minutes after the final whistle at the weekend for a ‘lap of appreciation’ in front of stands that had long ago emptied. To their left, Sheffield Wednesday’s jubilant players lapped up the acclaim of a sold-out away section at the top of the North Stand. They didn’t want the afternoon to end. Their opponents couldn’t get away quickly enough.
“We haven't given the fans enough to cheer about, not just in my tenure, but across the entire season,” admitted Dodds, whose spell as interim boss is now mercifully over. “As players and staff, we won't accept another season like that.”
Strong words, but on the evidence of the last six months, could you really trust those in the positions of power at the Stadium of Light to successfully turn things around?
Clearly, the appointment of a new permanent head coach is the first building block that needs to be put into place, and you would like to think that the calamitous end to the season, which ended with Sunderland in 16th position, has focused minds. Will Still? Rene Maric? Paul Heckingbottom? Rohl? Kristjaan Speakman and Kyril Louis-Dreyfus need to get this decision right, but they also need to act decisively now. The longer the current vacuum continues, the harder it will be to start generating positive momentum ahead of next season.
Speakman and Louis-Dreyfus believe that a head coach should be interchangeable, that the structures and philosophies that drive the overarching ‘project’ at the Academy of Light should be strong enough to withstand the upheaval created by a change of boss. The evidence of this season suggests that is nonsense. The identity of the man in charge matters. Get that wrong, and as life under Beale and Dodds has proved, everything else falls apart. Get it right, and as Sheffield Wednesday have shown under Rohl, a parlous situation can quickly be transformed.
Beyond the head-coach appointment, a host of other key decisions are pending. Was Saturday’s late substitution the last we will see of Jack Clarke in a Sunderland shirt? Might Anthony Patterson, surprisingly dropped to the bench for the final game, be following him out of the door? Will the list of incomings once again be dominated by untried youngsters from overseas? Or will Speakman and Louis-Dreyfus finally listen to what Mowbray, Beale and Dodds have all been saying and tweak their transfer approach to bring in some more experienced campaigners? A lot of uncertainty, after a season that brutally exposed both the failings of the current approach and the weaknesses that has created within the current squad.
“In the next seven weeks, actions will speak louder than words,” said Dodds, who watched first-half goals from Liam Palmer and Josh Windass condemn his side to their final defeat of the campaign at the weekend. “Whether that be the next head coach or players coming in or out. I feel like I’ve spoken a huge amount, and in the next seven weeks of the off season and then the six weeks of pre-season, it’s going to be a huge period for the football club, and actions will speak louder than words.”
When last season ended with the pain of a play-off semi-final defeat at Luton Town, there was uncertainty over Mowbray’s future and a sense that some changes were needed. But there was also a strong base to build from, momentum from a successful first season back in the Championship and a strong bond uniting fans, owners, players and club. This time around, there is none of that. Just a group of players wandering aimlessly around an empty stadium. Kyril and Kristjaan, it is over to you…