We’ve been here before with Sunderland. Luke O’Nien has, too.

Little over twelve months ago, O’Nien came on as a substitute at half-time in Sunderland’s Championship fixture with Stoke City at the Stadium of Light, his side trailing courtesy of Josh Laurent’s goal four minutes before the break. Forty-five minutes later, O’Nien and his team-mates slumped off on the back of a 5-1 home defeat to former head coach Alex Neil.

"It was ridiculous,” Tony Mowbray said of that defeat. “It is hard for the team, the supporters, the club. It was difficult to foresee it coming, I would suggest.

"It didn't feel like a normal Sunderland game where we are in control. Over recent games we have struggled to score enough goals to win football matches."

 

SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE: Win pair of hospitality tickets for Sunderland vs Sheff Wed

 

Fast-forward 13-months and Sunderland, and O’Nien, trudged off the Stadium of Light pitch having suffered a defeat by the same scoreline, this time to Blackburn Rovers. Interim head coach Mike Dodds labelled the performance as embarrassing and unacceptable. Yet the hallmarks of the display were similar to that of Mowbray’s side in March last year against Stoke.

Sunderland, after falling behind, had no control whatsoever in the game. They were erratic and easy to play though and against – Ryan Hedges’ goal making it 0-3 shortly after half-time the epitome of that ease as Blackburn carved through the centre of Sunderland at will on the break, outnumbering them in the final third before converting. Neil knew how to do it with Stoke against his former team, and John Eustace got it right for Blackburn.

But Sunderland have shown that soft underbelly too frequently in recent years, having suffered a number of heavy defeats. The 5-1 scorelines against both Blackburn and Stoke are joined by the same scoreline in a defeat at Rotherham United in 2021 before a 6-0 hammering at Bolton Wanderers in 2022, with a 4-0 reverse at home to Middlesbrough this season, albeit with mitigating circumstances of Sunderland being reduced to 10-men.

We Are Sunderland: Sunderland were beaten 5-1 at the Stadium of Light by Blackburn RoversSunderland were beaten 5-1 at the Stadium of Light by Blackburn Rovers (Image: Ian Horrocks)

O’Nien has featured in all but one of those humblings – missing the 6-0 defeat at Bolton through injury – so knows a thing or two about dealing with the adversity this Sunderland squad will be feeling following the latest instalment on Easter Monday. Sunderland went on to get promoted from League One the same season they lost both 5-1 and 6-0, last season they made the play-offs following their 5-1 defeat to Stoke. Although such joys will not happen this time around, O’Nien has certainly been in these trenches before.

 

READ MORE: 

 

“It’s a perfect example,” O’Nien tells We Are Sunderland when referencing the defeat to Stoke last year. “You lose that game and everyone was doom and gloom and wanted the season to end and then you go on a run and you get in the play-offs. That’s the joys of football.

“I appreciate the frustration from those who came [against Blackburn] – I would have booed myself, if I could. But that’s our responsibility to put right. It was justified. But like last year, it’s a perfect example of what we need to go and do. We expect a reaction.

“There’s always going to be someone out there pointing fingers, even when you play well there’s going to be someone calling you useless,” he adds. "You go with it and focus on the processes of ‘what do I need to do this week to become better than last week?’

“Criticism comes. It’s part and parcel of it. Fortunately, I go home to my kids and my kids don’t call me useless, which is nice. My kids help me really put things into perspective. I go home and I’m dad and when I come back to the training pitch I try to make sure that we’re all better and today is no different. You can either bury your head in the sand or you can puff out your chest and move forwards, and I know which one I’m going to be choosing.”

Much has been labelled at Sunderland this season in terms of their squad dynamics, most notably the age of the squad. It’s no secret Sunderland’s philosophy is to buy younger players and develop them, as well as their own, in an attempt to reap first team rewards or financial gains – whichever comes first depending on the acceleration of the players in question.

But the lack of experience has been a stick to beat Sunderland with throughout the campaign – and even more so after such a heavy defeat, with O’Nien the second oldest player in the squad behind Bradley Dack after the club sanctioned the exits of Danny Batth and Alex Pritchard over the course of the last two transfer windows – Lynden Gooch another experienced head to leave Wearside.

We Are Sunderland: Sunderland have suffered a number of heavy defeats in recent seasonsSunderland have suffered a number of heavy defeats in recent seasons (Image: Ian Horrocks)

“Each year when players leave there’s always an evolution in the changing room,” says O’Nien. “That always brings more responsibility on others and others have got to learn to lead quicker.

“The only thing with this year is we’ve got leaders who it might take a year or two normally because they’re quite young, who might have to come out of the woodwork a little bit quicker because there are less of the senior heads. It’s something we need to work on.

“We need more leaders to come forward, and they are. They’ll come. It’s not an easy thing to do. But when they do there’s going to be a hell of a group which is brewing because of the young talent we have. But we have to learn really fast.

“We had the young group last year and we achieved great things. It’s quite easy to point out when we lose a game that we’ve got a young group because when we win it’s a case of ‘great, we’re doing this with a young group.’ It’s really easy to point fingers.

“But from the younger players to myself as one of the older players, man for man, we were not good enough at any age. There was far more to that than being a young group."

He adds: “The good thing is, and I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t mean it, it doesn’t feel like we’ve had a bad run because we’re a very process-oriented team with what we have to do throughout the week and on the weekend.

“The performance was disappointing because in previous games you can draw and put a finger on it, but there were so many things wrong which are the non-negotiables that you should just do, and we didn’t. There was too much wrong.”

Sunderland’s season lay in relative ruin before the defeat to Blackburn, but the manner of which Monday’s defeat transpired is what will cause the greatest anger and concern in equal measure. Where last season there remained an element of cohesion, the Stoke defeat being an outlier, this season, at present, it is the opposite.

Good Friday’s success over Cardiff City was a relief, and harped back to some of those aesthetically pleasing performances that could be associated with Sunderland since their return to the Championship. Unfortunately, that seems to be the anomaly for Sunderland – at least as far as 2024 comes, with just four wins in 15 Championship games.

Following that 5-1 defeat to Stoke last season, Mowbray’s Sunderland lost just one of their remaining 11 games – that coming against promotion winners Sheffield United in a game they were unfortunate to lose. This time, however, there’s a large contrast.

As the Stadium of Light emptied further with each time Blackburn found the back of the net, it felt symbolic of where the club is currently at after the highs of last season. But with six games still left to play, O’Nien and his team-mates cannot share that mindset of both needing and wanting the season to be over.

We Are Sunderland: Mike Dodds has won just one game during his latest spell in interim charge of SunderlandMike Dodds has won just one game during his latest spell in interim charge of Sunderland (Image: Ian Horrocks)

“From a players’ point of view you start a week with either a good vibe because you’ve come off the back of three points or knowing we need to do ‘this, this and this’ this week to put things right. It’s the same process,” he says.

“From a kid I played the game because I loved it. So you don’t really want the season to end, you just want it to keep going. I appreciate everyone has different circumstances and different things going on in their lives so they might think like that. But if we were winning everyone would want it to continue. So, I understand and appreciate that after a few difficult results people might feel like it’s been a bit of a long season but it’s a process.

“We didn’t get promoted from League One straight away, it took three or four years of some highs, some lows and some suffering, but just because a season finishes in a certain way or you don’t get the desired end goal, that’s far from a waste. It’s about the processes you put in place, the foundations and this is a big chip out of those foundations where we need to be a lot stronger.

“But it’s days like this, it’s days like when we didn’t get promoted from League One that you see a lot about the team and you learn, so that when you do get promoted one day it’s because of these little setbacks that get you there.”

The objective of promotion will stay the same for Sunderland next season, and each season thereafter they remain outside of the Premier League, but it’s a remit a new head coach will be tasked with once the club finds its desired candidate.

It leaves Sunderland in a peculiar place – a one they’ve found themselves in since the departure of Michael Beale in February, with Dodds taking over as interim head coach for a third time. There’s no denying Dodds holds a strong relationship with the first team squad owing to his endeavours since being promoted to a first team coaching role. But that blend of Dodds the coach versus Dodds the head coach has been a little blurred over the last month, with the 37-year-old unable to turnaround Sunderland’s fortunes.

For a squad of players, it’s unusual to find yourself playing for a coach you respect but you know will not be in the same capacity following the conclusion of the upcoming six games. Dodds, it’s expected, will revert to his first team coaching role in the summer as a new head coach arrives on Wearside – albeit he continues to harbour his own ambitions of taking a leading role on a permanent basis at some stage in his career.

 

READ MORE: 

 

O’Nien dismissed the notion of the head coach situation being part of the cause for Sunderland’s awful run of form in 2024, but games such as this against Blackburn will do little to alleviate those assumptions.

“It’s something we don’t really think about [a new head coach coming in],” he says. “I know people might have perceptions of what they think of Mike Dodds – I think he’s exceptional. I really enjoy working under him and I think with time we will get it right but, as a group, we let him down.

“There’s no beating around the bush, there’s no hiding it. He can give us the tactics, training was great all week but if we go out there and don’t do the non-negotiables, which nobody can coach, you just do it; you run, you keep the ball, you respect the game – if you don’t do that, you don’t win games. A lot of direct criticism will go towards him but as a player, myself, I’m taking a lot of accountability for that. It just wasn’t good enough. As a group, we’ve got to be far more accountable and take responsibility because that was unacceptable.”

Sunderland have forged success from difficult moments in recent years and although it won’t happen this season, it’s something they will need to do again. Cutting out these heavy defeats, and the ease with which they happen, would be one place to start.