WHEN you speak in the media on a regular basis, your words have a habit of coming back on you.
It was different in the analogue age, where misguided statements can quickly – and literally – become tomorrow’s chip paper, or line the bottom of your cat’s litter tray.
But now as we live in a fully digital age, today’s football fan has the ability to call up every word your club’s staff have uttered.
READ MORE: Sunderland's losing streak continued with poor defeat at Southampton
It didn’t even take a whole load of Googling to unearth these two quotes, from Kristjaan Speakman, Sunderland’s sporting director, which I include below.
"We’re all aspirational. Tony hasn’t joined Sunderland to come and win the odd game and plod on through." Kristjaan Speakman, September 23, 2022
"We'll plod on to the end of the season and see where that gets us." Kristjaan Speakman, February 2, 2024
So, is this what we’re getting now? From the football porridge served up during Michael Beale’s disastrous reign, to Mike Dodds’ bipolar football – where each game’s teamsheet is written on a fresh piece of paper, bearing no relation to the last, leaving people baffled as to what shape we’re playing.
The approach has changed, sure, but the results are the same.
What we see now is the result of a succession of bad decisions being laid bare in front of us, revealing itself like one of those Magic Eye illustrations. But instead of displaying a beautiful peacock or a preening pegasus, it’s a picture of an overflowing toilet.
The bad decisions include: the summer transfer window recruitment; continued failure to effectively replace Ross Stewart; sanctioning a talent and experience exodus including Danny Batth, Alex Pritchard and Lynden Gooch in return for inexperienced, young players who need developing slowly, not thrown in at the deep end; sacking Tony Mowbray; hiring Michael Beale.
And, after Saturday’s 4-2 defeat to Southampton, we must now ask – was the appointment of Michael Dodds until the end of the season another of those mistakes?
Whichever level you’re at, six defeats on the spin is unacceptable, and it has surely extinguished any faint hopes we harbour of reaching the play-offs this season.
In fact, we're now looking down the table rather than up it.
We sit nine points off the drop zone and 11 points off promotion, and we’ve now lost more games than Birmingham and Huddersfield, in 21st and 22nd respectively.
Next weekend’s game against Queens Park Rangers has changed complexion dramatically. To end the run of defeats, we looked at the Leicester and Southampton games as being ‘must-not lose’ fixtures – but the QPR game is now a must-win.
The last thing we need is to be sucked into the relegation picture. It is almost unthinkable. I don’t think we will be, but we need to make sure of it – after all, we know how crazy this division is. Our charge to the play-offs last season was against the odds, but a slide in the opposite direction towards the drop zone is just as plausible.
So, what needs to happen?
In the short-term, should the club bring forward its plans to install a permanent manager? Whoever would come in has the same squad of players and very little time to turn it around.
Or, do we bring in a short-term firefighter in the mould of Neil Warnock? Someone who can get the results we need, leave in the summer and we can start again?
Both options would not look good for Dodds, who has viewed this temporary spell as being a long job interview. If that’s the case, he’s not doing very well. Could he handle stepping back and being someone else’s right-hand man again?
The third option, of course, is to keep things as they are.
But we should be warned - six defeats in a row isn’t plodding on – it’s a quickstep towards League One.
Recommended reading:
While the hierarchy should be praised for plotting a route out of football’s third tier in their first season in charge of the club – any blame for the club ending up back there two years later will be entirely at their door.
Because right now, it’s less of a plod and more of a wade. Sunderland are treading water, and find themselves at risk of sinking completely.
Doing nothing is not an option.
Read the rules here