Sunderland has survived Premier League relegation by small margins in five of the past eight campaigns, using a remarkable 10 different managers along the way. The board’s strategy has been simple but short-term; if it’s all going wrong, change manager, hope for a positive burst of results and scrape together enough points to survive.
The time has come for Sunderland to go down and I believe it will take the club an extremely long time to come back from relegation. Looking at the last four seasons, Sunderland has struggled to buy top players and has often resorted to signing “has-been” players from bigger clubs (John O’Shea, Wes Brown, Younes Kaboul), which accounts for their first problem.
The top scorers in those four most recent relegation battles summed up the quality of the team; Steven Fletcher, Connor Wickham, Adam Johnson and Jermain Defoe. Three of those four should be playing in the Championship. If that wasn’t bad enough, Lee Cattermole has been the club’s captain for the last three seasons and has been in the bottom two each season for the most relevant stats (tackles won, goals and assists). It is alarming that nobody at the club has seen this and changed captains.
That is only half of the problem. The average age of Sunderland’s last four first team squads is 29.7 years. That is where the real problem lies when looking for a long-term fix. Sunderland has one stand-out player in their current squad (Jordan Pickford), who looks set to leave for less than £10 million. Defoe is also set to depart leaving them with a less than average squad. The final problem is the management of the club. Paolo Di Canio had a unique presence, the fans loved him and you could see him being a long-term fix but since he left there has been no long-term plan.
Di Canio could have been the solution, even if that meant being relegated and coming back up as Sean Dyche has done for Burnley. The Clarets have stuck to their manager despite an embarrassing relegation but the experience has made them stronger as a unit and a club. David Moyes’s mentality has been an issue since he have his first interview in the job. “We will be in a relegation dog-fight, the players we have aren’t at the standard required,” he said, which was not exactly the sort of encouraging endorsement that would engender confidence within his squad.
It will be a long ride for Sunderland in the Championship, no matter how much the fans might be dreaming of a quick return to the Premier League.
Goodbye for now, Sunderland. by Nubaid Haroon Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCtMg-fWm7awR41vM1GhVOkA Twitter: twitter.com/rambofyi
The post Goodbye Sunderland: Your Time Is Up appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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