Back in December, Sunderland sporting director Kristjaan Speakman talked of an ‘obsession with progression’ as he explained the thinking behind Michael Beale’s appointment as head coach.
Watching the calamitous first half against Swansea City last weekend I could not help but think the reality has been regression - and at an alarming rate - over the last two-and-a-half months.
Beale’s unhappy tenure was cut short at the beginning of last week and Mike Dodds reinstalled as interim head coach, but any hopes that that change would lead to an immediate positive reaction were short-lived.
They trailed 2-0 at half-time against the Swans but the visitors could have scored four or five, while at the other end of the pitch the Black Cats had barely laid a glove on the their opponents.
With star winger Jack Clarke and defensive linchpin Dan Ballard missing, the former through injury and the latter through suspension, Sunderland looked like a bottom-half-of-the-Championship side rather than a team capable of repeating last season’s play-off campaign.
There was an improvement in the second half and Luke O’Nien halved the deficit, but the damage had already been done in that first period and Sunderland could not force an equaliser which meant they slumped to a third successive defeat against a struggling side, following the reverses at Huddersfield Town and Birmingham City.
When Speakman spoke of progress, Sunderland were three points outside the top six with a game in hand; today the gap has widened to eight points and that game in hand is no more.
During that same period, the January transfer window has come and gone without a striker arriving, Beale has been and gone with Dodds left to pick up the pieces, and on top of that has come the news that Clarke’s injury is set to sideline him for up to six weeks.
Clarke is not expected to resume playing until April and what will be the situation that greets his return?
A promotion fight? Not a chance.
A play-off battle? That looks increasingly improbable.
More likely it will be a scramble to finish in the top half or, at best, the top ten.
After finishing sixth last season, that is hardly the kind of ‘progress’ Sunderland fans had been expecting.
It is ten years this weekend since Sunderland’s last appearance in a major cup final.
Back in 2014, Sunderland fans dared to dream - and for 45 minutes at Wembley it looked like that dream might just come true.
Fabio Borini’s goal inside the opening ten minutes meant Gus Poyet’s side led Manchester City in the League Cup final at Wembley, and the travelling hordes from Wearside began to wonder if their club’s 41-year wait for a trophy might be coming to an end.
City were not yet in their Pep Guardiola pomp, but they had won a Premier League title under Roberto Mancini in 2012 and were on their way to another under Manuel Pellegrini.
But Sunderland, who had beaten City four years on the spin at the Stadium of Light in the league, threatened to produce a cup upset that would invite comparisons with their famous 1973 FA Cup triumph against the then-mighty Leeds United.
The dream did not last, however.
Yaya Toure equalised ten minutes into the second half, Samir Nasri completed the turnaround virtually straight from the kick-off, and Jesus Navas wrapped things up for City in injury time.
Sunderland are relatively frequent visitors to Wembley in recent times - they have been back under the arch four times since 2014, winning the League One play-off final in 2022 after losing in 2019, and winning the EFL Trophy in 2021 after losing in 2019 - but major cup finals are still a rarity, with the final against City coming 22 years after the 1992 FA Cup final against Liverpool.
And I can still remember watching on TV in 1985 as Sunderland lost in the League Cup final against this weekend’s opponents Norwich City.
It is frightening to think that that was almost 40 years ago.
Just as an aside, I heard a commentator say last weekend that Michael Beale was the shortest-serving ‘permanent’ manager/head coach in Sunderland’s history.
Of course, that is not the case.
Beale’s 12 game reign was double the length of club legend Niall Quinn’s short spell as co-owner/chairman/manager in 2006, with Quinn having appointed himself as manager outright rather than as caretaker or interim boss.
It does raise an interesting question over Mike Dodds’ status, however.
Dodds was took over from Beale and was announced as interim head coach but, assuming he sees out the remaining 12 games of the season, he will have overseen 13 games in a row (not including the three games he took charge of in December) which will be more than Quinn, Beale, and as many as Paolo Di Canio, all of whom were ‘permanent’ bosses.
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