Sunderland are seventh in the Championship and seeking promotion from League One to the Premier League in just their second season, so why does it feel like such a disgruntled and unhappy football club?
Those who traveled to Suffolk to watch Sunderland’s 2-1 defeat against Ipswich Town last weekend described a “toxic” away end that saw fans fighting amongst themselves. For seasoned fans who followed the club through thick and thin, it was a bleak and demoralizing experience.
Sunderland were in the game but without a striker to put the ball into the net and they suffered a familiar defeat against a team that had only been promoted to second place in May.
Clips of Sunderland fans sarcastically chanting “We want a striker, we want a striker” during the match were widely shared. It was a chant that new head coach Michael Beale could not ignore. He made a clear assessment, just as his predecessor Tony Mowbray had done several times before.
They signed four forwards in the summer: Ukrainian Nazariy Rusyn from Zorya, Mason Burstow (20) on loan from Chelsea, Eliezer Mayenda (18) from Sochaux and Luis Hemir (20) from Benfica’s B team. Beale, who has lost three of six games, is reluctant to commit to any of them for a long-term stay in the first team. Considering the quartet of strikers each scored a goal between them, you can see why.
Shortly after Mowbray’s sacking, at a dinner for former players before Christmas, sporting director Kristjaan Speakman told the crowd there was no need for Sunderland to play with the No9 and defended the recruitment of youngsters.
“That’s something we’re trying to add,” Beale said after the Ipswich defeat. “We have four No.9 players in this league who lack experience both in terms of age and number of games, so we work a lot with them behind the scenes. But in the meantime, we need to make the right decisions for the team.”
Bournemouth’s Kieffer Moore is understood to be the leading target. The 31-year-old Wales international would add something the team had been missing all season; Knowledge of English football and history of scoring goals at this level.
But recruiting is not controlled by the coach. This is Speakman’s domain. He was successful, most notably signing Jobe Bellingham, Jude’s younger brother, from his former employer Birmingham City in the summer for just £2 million. However, this is not the case for forwards, who are the most important position.
Beale was an unpopular choice to replace a popular manager. She knew what she was getting herself into. Sunderland are keen to appoint French club Reims’ young English manager Will Still but will not pay the compensation required to release him from his contract, sources have told Telegraph Sport.
Beale was their second choice; A highly rated coach who was initially successful as manager at QPR but failed at Rangers. He turned down a job as a manager in the Premier League at Wolves before moving to Scotland. It wasn’t a bad appointment on paper, especially as it was his poor recruitment record at Rangers that weakened him, but for a manager at the start of his reign, perceptions are everything. It has already become a lightning rod for growing discontent.
“The biggest reason for the negativity is what happened to Tony Mowbray,” said Stephen Goldsmith. Wise Men Say digital audio file. “I think it’s the first time in my life that Sunderland have sacked a manager the fans didn’t want to leave.
“Mowbray received some criticism for only having a Plan A, but the problem is that Plan A was a very good plan indeed. It was good to watch, it took you off your feet, it was really attacking football on the front foot.
“What it meant to the fans to sack him was that the performance wasn’t good enough. They’ve backed themselves into a corner. Anything outside the playoffs is a failure. It appears that the decision is not related to football. Do they really have the fans’ best interests in mind in this situation? “It was a very selfish act and you have to be really careful with these things.”
Sunderland’s young French owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus is being criticized and questioned for the first time since purchasing the club in 2021. Just like the mighty Speakman.
It is significant that he remains largely in the shadows and occasionally posts statements on Instagram; just as he did when he apologized for his decision to allow Newcastle to redecorate one of the bars at the Stadium of Light in their own colors and branding ahead of the Wear-Tyne derby. earlier this month – Dreyfus met with his supporters this week to try to smooth things over.
The club’s handling of their first North East derby in eight years – they also agreed to allow 6,000 Newcastle fans to attend the match and moved their own season ticket holders out of the North Stand to accommodate them – angered fans. This destroyed much of the goodwill Dreyfus had built up after taking the club out of the First Division.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forgive them for that,” Goldsmith says. “Okay, a promotion will cause this to disappear, but it will take a long time to forget it. We knew this would happen [the bar being decorated in Newcastle branding], we said on the podcast three weeks before it was released, urging them not to do it. Yet they did. “This was a decision by people who didn’t understand what the club was about.”
It was largely Dreyfus’s decision to dismiss Mowbray, and it was a wound from which Beale could not heal. Beale’s appointment was the Sunderland board’s third campaign for an unemployed manager and he was therefore relieved of the obligation to pay any compensation.
Rightly or wrongly, this fuels the debate, for all his talk of a best practice culture and ambition, the owner wants to do things cheaply. Just like he did by searching for young players from all over Europe at affordable prices.
Sources told Telegraph Sport that the relationship between veteran Mowbray Dreyfus, 24, broke down months ago. It was a personality clash that led to a long farewell. Mowbray openly joked with people in late summer that he would be sacked and that it would happen very quickly.
In private conversation he talked about intervention from above; Being questioned to an unacceptable level about tactics and team selection.
If a young owner and hands-on sporting director, 60 years old and with a lifetime of experience in the game, tried to tell him where he was going wrong, there was bound to be tension.
Mowbray had become increasingly bold in publicly questioning Sunderland’s recruitment model. After just six games, Beale already appears to be doing the same.
Sunderland, which faces Hull City at home on Friday night, continues to stay in the promotion race despite all the negativities. They have a young, exciting if somewhat inconsistent team and have built the squad on one of the lowest wage budgets in the Championship. There should be reasons for optimism, even as cracks begin to appear in relationships.
Dreyfus runs Sunderland like a company. It won’t pump a lot of money into chasing the Holy Grail of the Premier League. But that doesn’t mean promotion is beyond them.
Like Speakman, he’s trying to be smart. They are trying something Sunderland have not done before, and there is reason to admire the recruitment model they have doggedly stuck to. They uncovered some rough diamonds to polish, so Beale was appointed. His reputation as a coach who develops players.
Every owner goes through a difficult period, and Dreyfus is experiencing this for the first time. But the pressure is on following self-inflicted derby injuries and an inability to work with Mowbray.
“I think most fans have concerns about the recruiting model,” Goldsmith added. “We’ve seen this club get into financial trouble before, so the template is fine. A lot of clubs use that template, buy young players, make them better, sell them for a profit and reinvest the money back into the team.
“But there needs to be some flexibility. You could copy and paste a centre-back and defensive midfielder that we wanted in January last year and they did nothing to resolve it.
“This is the longest period we’ve been outside the top flight in our history. People say look where we’ve come from, as if we should be grateful for what we have now, but four years in League One was the lowest point in the club’s history. That’s not something to dwell on. “It needs to be in the Premier League, but can these club owners get us there?”