SHOULD Sheffield Wednesday beat Sunderland on Saturday, they will not only secure their Championship status when they had previously looked dead and buried, but they will finish the season with just three points fewer than the Black Cats.
Does that say more about Wednesday’s remarkable turnaround, or is it more about Sunderland’s season completely imploding?
Well, it’s a bit of both.
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When Wednesday appointed manager Danny Rohl last October, The Owls were rock bottom of the Championship having failed to win the first 11 games of the season. Sunderland, meanwhile, were fourth.
As we discussed on the podcast last week, if the season started on the day Rohl was appointed, his Wednesday side would be in 11th, six points off the play-offs. Sunderland, meanwhile, would be 19th, ten points worse off and just three points off the drop zone.
It’s clear to see that the Black Cats’ season has fallen off a cliff since Michael Beale’s appointment in December. If the wheels came off when we went on a six-game losing streak, the nuts had definitely been loosened before then.
Sunderland’s failures in being able to appoint a competent manager – and I’m afraid I’m including Mike Dodds’ tenure in this – since sacking Tony Mowbray is brought into sharp focus when compared to the likes of Wednesday, and also Queens Park Rangers, who brought in Marti Cifuentes from Hammarby. Cifuentes has led the Rs to safety and ending the season in a positive manner which has given QPR fans genuine optimism for next season.
Both appointments – Rohl and Cifuentes – raised eyebrows among other EFL clubs because of the leftfield nature of their emergence.
This was Rohl’s first managerial role having been an assistant at RB Leipzig, Southampton and Bayern Munich, working with managers such as Ralf Rangnick and Hansi Flick.
Wednesday, having dispensed with Xisco Munoz after the club’s worst-ever start to the season, himself replacing Darren Moore who fell out with the controversial Owls owner Dejphon Chansiri, have somehow struck gold with Rohl, either by accident or as a result of a complete transformation of how they appoint managers.
Chansiri remains a hugely unpopular figure in Sheffield but appears to have done something right with the appointment of Rohl.
Sheffield Wednesday boss Danny Rohl. (Image: PA)
By contrast, Sunderland’s recent managerial appointments – certainly since Kyril Louis-Dreyfus took control of the club and Kristjaan Speakman took over as sporting director – have been managers that were out of work and based very much domestically. None of those managers commanded any kind of compensation payment.
For a club that recruits its players from far-flung reaches of world football, including France, Ukraine and Costa Rica, their managers in recent years have been named Alex, Tony and three Michaels if you include Beale, Dodds and Proctor.
The club are very comfortable with bringing in young, exciting yet untested players, but seem to lack a similar willingness to take a chance on a young, exciting yet untested managers.
And this desire to play it safe in that respect has seemingly led us to where we are now. Plodding on.
Prior to the Neil appointment in 2022, Speakman said: “We had a really clear criteria on the type of coach we want to work for the club, what the requirements are of that individual, what we are judging them against because you need to have clarity with that member of staff.
“Naturally we are running a succession plan for that position so we have been tracking coaches for over the last year.
“We are also looking at who matches up with our style of play, who is progressing, who do we think is someone who can come in and add value to our football club."
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In terms of the style of play, Louis-Dreyfus spoke, upon sacking Mowbray in December, about a “relentless demand for a high-performance culture to be implemented throughout the club and the development of a strong playing identity that you, our loyal supporters, can all be proud of.”
While the club have used data modelling before in identifying a new manager, it would be safe to assume that in Beale’s appointment in particular, that method is not being used in the club’s latest search for a coach.
If it was, perhaps it would be Sunderland finishing their season like a train, and not Sheffield Wednesday.
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