No sooner had one penned this week's offering, fresh with terms like Birmingham blitz and Huddersfield horror, than word began to filter through that Michael Beale, Sunderland manager, was no more. Alas this is the reality of writing on football, the ever changing landscape and the ability to adapt as significant moves abound. With Sunderland it is exactly that. On steroids.

Perhaps it was always destined, a marriage of convenience where Sunderland had placed a criteria that indicated 'cheap, out of work and conformist'. Someone appointed, publicly lauded as an example of new age coaching, with the lexicon of modern football to hand but without any demonstrable experience to show that when the going gets tough he, with others, will get going.

Beale arrived at the negotiating table with very few cards, fewer chosen coaches and almost no fans within Wearside. For a club with such a turnover of managers it is hard to recall any whose arrival has been met with an apathy that occasionally manifested itself in downright anger.

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In his first game he went from a hiding to nothing to nothing to hiding, this as Coventry won 3-0 at the Stadium of Light. The enraged cries from the stands, even if a flattering scoreline for the Sky Blues, were not merely discontent at what was witnessed but rancour at an uninspiring appointment.

The ensuing weeks, even with occasional victories, were not going to trouble the depth of disappointment that the broad support felt as a result of him being tasked with guiding the sleeping giant back to the promised land.

Whilst the defeats to Huddersfield and Birmingham were bad enough we then had to contend with the optics of his, apparent, refusal to shake hands with Trai Hume as he left the field of play in the closing stages at St Andrews. It perhaps indicates the profundity of feeling among supporters that very little benefit of the doubt was afforded to Beale.

This, in the perspective of many, reinforcing the idea of a manager and playing staff whose relationship had become increasingly fraught. It may be that in the time ahead there will be reflection and a possible conclusion that his time in football may be best served as a coach, but without the added pressures of management and where popularity with players can be assured through training that is enjoyable, entertaining and effective.

Mike Dodds will assume managerial control between now and the end of the season. This, in itself, is telling. A club, in essence, suggesting that the problems were such that simply removing the manager may improve matters without necessarily replacing him.

The issues that afflict Sunderland AFC did not start and stop with Michael Beale. More, they predate the arrival of Kyril Louis Dreyfuss but it is the latter, in assuming control, who has accepted the responsibility of addressing them.

He has, like others before him, adopted the position that changes of management can proves fruitful. It disregards certain realities, instead opting to hope that a scatter gun approach and beneficial timing may bring results.

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Sunderland have, in the last decade, employed countless managers. Many have enjoyed success either prior to their time in the North East or in the aftermath of their departure.

As different as they are, what tends to bond them is that whatever skillset each possesses they were unable to utilise it during their time to any great extent as the Sunderland supremo.

Owners, majority shareholders – call them what you will - have came and went, each disinclined from advice to look under the bonnet so to speak. Their preference to follow the football narrative that if something is amiss it can be rectified by changes in personnel.

Sunderland is, perhaps, the case study to suggest such a theory is flawed