Sunderland are seventh in the Championship and in the hunt for promotion to the Premier League in only their second season after League One, so why do they feel like such a difficult and unlucky football club?
Those who traveled to Suffolk last weekend to watch Sunderland’s 2-1 defeat to Ipswich Town described a “toxic” away match where fans fought with each other. For die-hard supporters, who have followed the club through thick and thin, it was a somber and depressing experience.
Sunderland were in the game, but without a striker who could put the ball in the net, and they slipped to a familiar defeat against a side who were only promoted to the second tier in May.
Clips of Sunderland fans sarcastically chanting during the match: “We want a striker, we want a striker” were widely shared. It was a chant that new head coach Michael Beale couldn’t miss. He delivered a blunt assessment, just as his predecessor Tony Mowbray had done several times before.
They signed four strikers in the summer: Nazariy Rusyn, a Ukrainian from Zorya, Mason Burstow (20), on loan from Chelsea, Eliezer Mayenda (18), from Sochaux and Luis Hemir (20), from Benfica’s B team. Beale, who has lost three of his six games, is reluctant to give any of these matches an extra time in the first team. Considering the quartet of forwards have scored one goal between them, you can understand why.
At a dinner for former players before Christmas, shortly after Mowbray’s dismissal, sporting director Kristjaan Speakman told the audience that Sunderland did not need to play with number 9 and defended the recruitment of the youngsters.
“It’s something we’re trying to add to,” Beale said after the Ipswich defeat. “We have four number 9s in the build-up with a lack of experience in this competition, both in terms of age and number of games, so we are working hard with them in the background. But in the meantime, we have to make the right decisions for the team.”
Bournemouth’s Kieffer Moore is believed to be a top target. At 31 years old, the Wales international would add something the team has been missing all season; knowledge of English football and a track record of scoring goals at that level.
However, recruitment is not controlled by the head coach. It’s Speakerman’s domain. He has had success, not least by signing Jobe Bellingham, Jude’s younger brother, for just £2million from his former employers Birmingham City this summer. But not with the most important position of all: the attackers.
Beale was an unpopular choice to replace a popular manager. He knew what he was getting into. Sources have told Telegraph Sport that Sunderland wanted to appoint Will Still, the young English manager of French club Reims, but did not want to pay the compensation needed to complete his contract.
Beale was their second option; a highly rated coach who initially flourished as a manager at QPR but flopped at Rangers. He had turned down a job as manager in Wolves’ Premier League before moving to Scotland. On paper he wasn’t a bad appointment, especially as his poor recruitment results undermined him at Rangers, but perceptions are everything to a manager at the start of their reign. He has already become a lightning rod for the growing discontent.
“The big driver of the negativity is what happened to Tony Mowbray,” explains the BBC’s Stephen Goldsmith Wise men say podcast. “I think it’s the first time in my life that Sunderland have fired a manager whose fans didn’t want to leave.
“Mowbray got some criticism for only having a Plan A, but the problem is that Plan A was really good. It was good to see, it brought you up, really attacking football with your front foot.
“Sacking him, what the supporters said was that the performance wasn’t good enough. They’ve backed themselves into a corner. Anything outside of the playoffs is a failure. It seems the decision had nothing to do with football. In which case, do they really have the fans’ best interests at heart? That was a very selfish move and you have to be very careful with things like that.”
For the first time since he bought the club in 2021, Sunderland’s young French owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus is also being criticized and questioned. Just like the almighty Speakman.
Tellingly, he has largely remained in the shadows, occasionally releasing statements on Instagram – as he did when he apologized for the decision to allow Newcastle to reopen one of the bars at the Stadium of Light to decorate in their own colors and branding ahead of the Wear-Tyne derby earlier this month – Dreyfus met with supporters this week to try to smooth things over.
The club’s handling of the first North East derby in eight years – they also agreed to allow 6,000 Newcastle fans to attend the match and removed their own season ticket holders from the North Stand to accommodate them – outraged fans. It took away much of the goodwill Dreyfus had built up after taking the club out of League One.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forgive them for that,” Goldsmith says. “Okay, promotion would make it fade away, but it will take a long time to forget that. We knew it was happening [the bar being decorated in Newcastle branding], we said on the podcast three weeks before it came out and urged them not to do it. They did it anyway. It was the decision of people who don’t understand what the club stands for.”
It was largely Dreyfus’ decision to fire Mowbray and it is a wound that Beale has not been able to heal. Beale’s appointment marked the third time that the Sunderland board has chosen an unemployed manager and therefore not had to pay any compensation.
Rightly or wrongly, that fuels the argument: for all their talk about a best practice culture and ambition, the owner wants to do things cheaply. As he has done by looking for young players at bargain prices from all over Europe.
Sources have told Telegraph Sport that the relationship between veteran Mowbray Dreyfus, 24, had soured months earlier. It was a personality clash that led to a long goodbye. Mowbray openly joked with people in late summer that his dismissal was coming and that it would be brutally quick.
Privately he talked about interference from above; to be questioned at an unacceptable level about tactics and team selection.
At the age of 60 and with a lifetime of experience in the game, tension could certainly arise when a young owner and hands-on sporting director tried to tell him where he was going wrong.
Mowbray had become increasingly bold in his public questioning of Sunderland’s recruitment model. After just six games, Beale already appears to be doing the same.
But despite all the negativity, Sunderland – who play Hull City at home on Friday evening – remain in the promotion race. They have a young, exciting – if somewhat inconsistent – squad and have built the squad on one of the lowest wage budgets in the Championship. There should be reason for optimism even as cracks begin to appear in relationships.
Dreyfus runs Sunderland like a business. He won’t spend a lot of money chasing the Holy Grail of the Premier League. But that doesn’t mean promotion is out of their reach.
He tries to be smart, just like Speakman. They are trying something Sunderland have not done before and there is reason to also admire the recruitment model they are stubbornly sticking to. They dug up some rough diamonds to cut, and that’s why Beale was appointed. His reputation as a coach who improves players.
Every owner goes through a difficult period and Dreyfus is experiencing this for the first time. But after the self-inflicted wounds in the derby and the inability to work with Mowbray, the pressure is on.
“I think most fans are questioning the recruiting model,” Goldsmith added. “We’ve seen this club get into a financial mess before, so the template is fine. Many clubs use that template, bring in young players, make them better, sell them on at a profit and reinvest the money in the team.
“But there has to be some flexibility. You can copy and paste what we needed last January, a striker and a defensive midfielder, and they have done nothing to address it.
“This is the longest we have spent outside the top flights in our history. People say look where we’ve come from, as if we should be grateful for what we have now, but spending four years in League One was the lowest point in the club’s history. That’s not something to think about. This club should be in the Premier League, but will these owners ever get us there?”