TOWARDS the end of Wednesday’s press conference at the Academy of Light, which saw Michael Beale formally presented as Sunderland’s new head coach, Kristjaan Speakman found himself speaking about ‘the model’ that the club have put in place in the last couple of seasons.
“I don’t know who first used the words ‘the model’,” laughed the sporting director. “I think it might have been me, and if it was, I should probably have checked myself.” The model, the plan, the strategy. Whatever you want to call it, it has certainly been a hot topic on Wearside this month.
Adhering to ‘the model’ was Speakman and Kyril Louis-Dreyfus’ rationale for dismissing Tony Mowbray and installing Beale as head coach, and it widely held to have been the guiding factor behind pretty all of the key decisions that have been made since Sunderland returned to the Championship a year-and-a-half ago.
Buying a host of young players. That’s the model. Selling Ross Stewart and allowing the likes of Danny Batth and Lynden Gooch to leave. The model. Frustrating Mowbray to the point where he felt compelled to rail publicly against the recruitment process and the need to play unproven youngsters in the first team. Again, that’s the model at work.
So, as he prepares to take charge of his first game against Coventry City tomorrow, what does Beale understand Sunderland’s overarching belief system to be?
“I had my understanding of the model from the outside, and the model is about development and having an elite way of training and playing,” he explained. “It’s about recruiting players that are on the up, rather than players that are maybe already at their full potential.
“There’s an excitement with working with that, and the potential to fulfil it. It’s a group of players that have really high ambition, and have not fulfilled it yet. I’m completely aligned with that.
“That’s pretty much where I am as a coach as well – I need to establish myself firmly as a coach. I’ve been an assistant for a number of years, and in youth development, but as a lead coach, it’s time for me to fulfil my potential here at Sunderland. And that’s how I see the squad as well. That’s where I see the alignment.
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“All of the processes are nowhere near as complex as people would maybe assume. Everything that I’ve heard and listened to is what I believe in, and that’s why I was so keen. The interview process was lengthy in terms of the amount of discussion we had and the areas we delved into and went back over, to make sure there was real clarity on all sides, and I’m delighted to be sat here.”
So, Beale professes to be happy with the remit and parameters of his role. But what about Speakman? Is he willing to grant his head coach a free rein over selection, or as Mowbray seemed to be hinting in his final few interviews, is he applying pressure to play certain players? Does he demand a specific tactical approach, and the adoption of a pre-defined playing style? Does he want his head coach to have a major input into recruitment? Or does he want to present him with a group of players at the start of every season, whether he has agreed to their purchase or not?
“We’re certainly putting pressure on to play a certain style because we’ve got an identity at Sunderland that we need to have,” said the sporting director. “Everybody needs to be aligned with that.
“Tony was certainly aligned with that. When Tony came to the football club, we spent hours sat in his living room going through what Sunderland is and how he felt he could add to Sunderland. He came and he did that for us.
“The stuff around the other components, the team selection is the coach’s choice and when it comes to recruitment, the coach has a huge say. We don’t sign players that the coach doesn’t want.
“Ultimately, we have to try to ensure those players are able to come and hit the ground running. Sometimes they hit the ground running straight away, sometimes they take a little bit longer. There’s loads of context in there, some of which is sometimes difficult for fans and stakeholders to understand.”
According to Speakman, Beale will have a major input into recruitment decisions, but recent evidence suggests that whatever their head coach says, the Sunderland hierarchy will be extremely reluctant to veer away from an approach that focuses almost exclusively on the purchase of young, inexperienced players, often from overseas, who can be bought cheap and hopefully see their value increase during their time on Wearside.
Financially, the template makes a lot of sense. But can it go hand-in-hand with an aspiration to win promotion back to the Premier League?
“I don’t think the two things are contradictory,” insisted Speakman. “You want sustainable success. There’s been teams over recent years that have found themselves in play-off positions and very close to the Premier League, but then the year after have found themselves very close to relegation.
“We’re trying to grow in the appropriate stages, but we don’t feel that that should be contradictory to being at the top end of the table. Our ambition at the minute is to have an opportunity to get promoted. As we sit today, it has the context of how the league table looks, and a couple of teams have obviously got out ahead of us.
“But success in the short term is having that opportunity to get promoted, and then behind the scenes, we have to keep building to be a Premier League club. From a stadium and training-ground perspective, you’ve got the infrastructure in place, but there’s so much behind the scenes around the people and processes to make sure you can keep rolling out success year after year.
“That doesn’t happen just by having a coach or a team – it’s a lot deeper and there’s a lot more to it than that. That’s what we’re working really, really hard to have.”
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