O’Neill left to pick up the pieces after Bruce’s reign of terror — opposition focus

Sunderland’s scatter fire approach to the transfer market has left them with an unbalanced team lacking attacking threat. Steve Bruce paid the price with his job, can Martin O’Neill clear up the mess he left behind?

Overview

For those, like me, increasingly pinning their hopes of QPR survival on a couple of quality January reinforcements our visitors on Wednesday night, Sunderland, may just temper your transfer window enthusiasm. New signings, it turns out, are not a guarantee of immediate success.

In the last two and a half years Sunderland have signed 22 players at a cost just short of £74m, offloaded 34 to recoup £65.75m of that and for all of it they’re no better, and arguably worse, than they were when Steve Bruce took over from Ricky Spragia at the beginning of the process. In all, 56 transfers have been completed in one form or another and the upshot is a team with only one genuine left sided player and virtually no attack whatsoever. Little wonder then that Bruce has recently fallen on his sword.

Sunderland’s owner Ellis Short and chairman Niall Quinn seem, on the face of things, to be ideal boardroom material. Quinn played for Sunderland from 1996 to 2002 so has a good understanding of the club and its supporters while Short has certainly not been shy of throwing some money at the team since he took over a 30% stake in 2008. He’s a quiet, private and reserved man more at home when purchasing Scottish castles than Premiership footballers and leaves Quinn as the public face of the boardroom.

The club as a whole seems geared to success as well with a massive state of the art stadium, excellent training complex, a large and vocal home support and financial security. Why then have they become embroiled in another relegation scrap in a league where much smaller outfits with much more meagre means have successfully survived and prospered – Fulham, Stoke, West Brom and perhaps Norwich, Swansea and even QPR this term?

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For me the problem for sometime in this part of the world has been the manager. First Roy Keane and then Steve Bruce, with a brief spell for Ricky Spragia in between, have thrown good money after bad at an astonishing amount of players. Upon promotion to the Premiership Keane immediately signed 15 players at a cost of £43m then spent another £15m a season later. The upshot of this was two near relegation misses and, eventually, his departure. Of those 15 players Keane signed initially in 2007/08 only two, Craig Gordon and Kieran Richardson, remain at the club today.

That’s fairly typical of the chronic lack of long term planning and joined up thinking that has gone into creating the Sunderland team we welcome on Wednesday – a team with no left side, and no attack despite 56 transfers in two and a half years.

Roughly this time last year Steve Bruce took a Sunderland team topped off by Asamoah Gyan and Danny Welbeck with support in midfield from Jordan Henderson to Chelsea and comprehensively played them off the park in a 3-0 win. With Darren Bent to come back into the side the Mackems looked well set for good times ahead. In the summer, rightly, they focussed on strengthening the defence with Wes Brown and John O’Shea the headline acquisitions from Manchester United.

In the meantime though they sold Darren Bent to Aston Villa, Jordan Henderson to Liverpool, Gyan has gone on loan to the Middle East and Welbeck has returned to his parent club at the end of a loan spell. In their place has come Nicklas Bendtner who would be the world’s greatest centre forward if his ability matched up to his opinion of his own worth but, as it doesn’t, is often little more than an enormous waste of flesh and hair gel. So now the defence is sorted, only Fulham have conceded less outside the top six, but the attack is woefully inadequate. As ever Bruce’s sacking was met with the usual outpouring from the usual suspects – Sam Allardyce, who has never once believed a managerial sacking to be justified in the history of the game, used his Evening Standard column to say Bruce should have been given more time and backing. Really Sam? More time and more money, after 56 transfers in two and a half years had made the team worse? Christ alive.

It should of course be pointed out that the bids received for both Bent and Henderson were astronomically high and had to be accepted, while Gyan seems to have forced a move through for his own financial gain, but it’s that idea of joined up thinking that springs to mind again. Even before Gyan left should there not have been some serious bids for some serious frontmen made in the summer given that Bent and Welbeck had definitely gone? Peter Crouch, Demba Ba, Yakubu, Craig Bellamy, Roque Santa Cruz and others all moved in the summer without Sunderland registering serious interest – they even got beaten to the DJ Campbell signing by Flavio Briatore owned QPR at a time when we were refusing to spend any money on anybody.

What Sunderland have needed, really from the day they arrived back in this division, is a strong and experienced manager who has a clearly defined and refined style of play and system that he knows and has worked in the past. Somebody a notoriously demanding set of supporters can get behind and welcome into the club without concerns about any latent connections with the city of Newcastle. Somebody with a track record of getting the very best out of every player and penny he has at his disposal.

Quite why it’s taken them this long to appoint Martin O’Neill is a mystery to me.

Interview

Despite the short notice and Christmas preparations, Simon Walsh from The Roker Report kindly found time in his day to give us a bit of an insight into life as a Sunderland fan at the moment.

Firstly, what are your feelings on the appointment of Martin O'Neill?

Delighted. We were going nowhere fast under Steve Bruce and someone who can take us to the much-fabled next level was needed. Martin's got a fantastic track-record, and if he can have just a smidgen of the success he's previously had then he'll be a great appointment.

Where and why did it go so wrong for Steve Bruce?

Where to start!? He managed to alienate himself from the fans with persistent jabs and insults, and what was happening on the pitch was nothing to write home about either. He just seemed devoid of ideas and inspiration, like he'd used up everything he knew and it simply wasn't enough. Thankfully now we have O'Neill to see things from a different angle.

Bruce was often very critical of the hostile atmosphere towards Sunderland from their own fans when things weren't going well. Was that a fair point?

Not at all. It was a hostile environment at times, but that was entirely his own doing. Three (count'em) home wins in 2011 means fans are going to be a little bit narked. The chanting about Mr Bruce’s roots and body shape at the end of the Wigan game we're nothing malicious per-se, just frustration that every single fan wanted him out by whatever means necessary. Some of the press labelled it moronic, but most of them never saw us, as was proven with a lot of their idiotic statements in the aftermath.

Considering the money Sunderland seem to have to spend on players, the facilities and the support do you consider that your club is under achieving at the moment?

I do, but we're not massively under-performing. For all the money spent, there's been a lot recouped. I read somewhere that over the two and a half years of Bruce his net spend was only around £8m., whilst the facilities have been here for some time. I think our natural position should be towards the bottom of the top ten.

What should be a realistic aim for this season, and then going forward what can Sunderland achieve over the next couple of years?

This season I think it's just a case of saving face and trying to get as high up as possible. I don't think anyone has a target or expectation in mind. From there it would be nice to get comfortably in the top ten, and a few years down the line a push for a European place. We've a terrible cup record, so a run in either of those would be nice too.

Who is the star man, unsung hero, promising youngster and weak link in your squad?

Star man? On current form you'd have to say someone like Seb Larsson, who makes us dangerous from set-pieces anywhere on the pitch. Unsung hero? I'd plump for David Vaughan, although he is starting to get more and more noticed. Gets about his business well, and becoming an integral part of the team. A Promising Youngster would be a straight shoot-out between Ryan Noble, who scores goals for fun at reserve level, or James McClean who recently broke into the first team. The weak link, any striker who starts. We just can't score.

Thanks to Simon for his time, we’ll try and catch up with him again before the return fixture later this season.

Manager

There are few managers I rate as highly, pound for pound, as Martin O’Neill and I cannot believe it has taken him this long to get back into the top flight.

The delay seemed to be down to a dispute over settlement money with his previous employers Aston Villa, who he walked out on just a fortnight before the start of last season. I’ve heard it said that Villa fans weren’t that unhappy to see the back of him – citing his failure to push them beyond the sixth to eighth bracket he consistently had them finishing in and a less than inspiring style of play. If that is true, they’re idiots.

Nobody had done as well at Villa before O’Neill for many a long year and you only have to look at what’s happened since he left to see what a difference he makes. Last season, with O’Neill’s team plus Darren Bent but without O’Neill, Villa were battling to stay away from the bottom three. No, as far as I’m concerned, he did as well at Villa as anybody could do or is likely to do again for some considerable time.

As a player O’Neill captained Northern Ireland and won more than 60 caps, at club level he spent ten years with Nottingham Forest and won the European Cup and First Division title under Brian Clough. He later clocked up more than 50 matches for Norwich and Notts County but was troubled by a knee injury that forced him to retire before he could play in the 1986 World Cup.

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He managed in non-league with first Grantham and then Shepshed Charterhouse but it was at Wycombe where he really made his name, guiding them into the Football League for the first time in their history by winning the Conference in 1992/93 and then taking them straight through the Third Division to the Second via a play off final win against Preston at Wembley. He also won two FA Trophy titles with the Chairboys as well before leaving to join Norwich in 1995.

Norwich were then under the chairmanship of Robert Chase, widely disliked by the supporters of the club and, as it turned out, O’Neill as well. Their relationship lasted barely five months at which point, angry that the chairman had vetoed a £750,000 move for Dean Windass from Hull, O’Neill resigned on the morning of an away game at Leicester and promptly joined the Foxes to replace Mark McGhee who’d left for Wolves. He’d turned down a chance to go to Leicester a year before to stay at Wycombe and see if an unlikely third straight promotion could be miraculously won.

At Leicester he achieved four consecutive top ten finishes in the Premiership, two League Cup wins and another League Cup final appearance. He subsequently bossed Celtic where he won the SPL three times, the Scottish Cup three times and the Scottish League Cup once. He also took them to a UEFA Cup Final – a remarkable achievement when you consider just how God awful Scottish football really is. At Villa he finished sixth in the Premiership for three years in a row and again reached a League Cup Final in 2010. Tellingly none of Leicester, Celtic or Villa have done as well since he left.

When he’s not improving his managerial record O’Neill has spent time in television studios where his appearance is akin to engaging and encouraging the mad bloke who sits in the corner of every pub in the country chittering on while the other regulars ignore him. But while Alan Hanson criticises every defence, Lee Dixon states the bleeding obvious and Alan Shearer says nothing of any worth at all O’Neill, when he can get his point out, is always engaging with his football chat. He’ll often have spotted something in the game that the rest of the panel has missed or, more tellingly, disagree with all of them totally – a good sign in my book.

He’s the manager every club outside the top four should want, and Sunderland have pulled off a masterstroke to get him.

Scout Report

For me Sunderland’s current plight on the field can be summed up by focusing on two players; Kieron Richardson and Stephane Sessegnon.

The player turnover during Steve Bruce’s two and a half years in charge on Wearside was astronomical; 22 players signed at a cost of just shy of £74m, 34 out to the tune of £65.75m plus whatever we paid for Anton Ferdinand. The upshot of all this activity is a team with no left side and no attack which really is quite astonishing for a manager of Bruce’s experience. I’m sure he would point to extenuating circumstances – how could he know what would happen with Asamoah Gyan after he’d sold Darren Bent for big money for instance? Or that Titus Bramble would once again fall foul of the law within weeks of Anton Ferdinand leaving?

But it’s that left hand side of the team that is the saddest indictment of Bruce’s reign and will surely be Martin O’Neill’s first priority in January. Richardson is a very fine Premiership player, one of the best outside the top six or seven teams. His form for Manchester United, West Brom and Sunderland initially earned him England recognition – in fact his goals and lively wing play were one of the main reasons The Baggies were able to become the first side to survive in the Premiership having sat bottom of the table at Christmas back in 2004/05.

I saw Sunderland twice under Bruce this season, at Norwich and Arsenal, and on neither occasion was Richardson been used in the role he caused such havoc in earlier in his career. In fact in both games he played at left full back, simply because there was nobody else. O’Neill already seem to have recognised this issue and pushed him further forward with Phil Bardsley (right footed) filling in at left back. Richardson was much more advanced, and scored just his second goal in ten months, at Molineux under caretaker manager Eric Black and missed a couple of sitters having advanced into the area v Blackburn. This was in stark contrast to the defeat at Norwich earlier this season he was absolutely anonymous and Sunderland directed all their attacks down the right hand side through mediocre Egyptian winger Ahmed Elmohamady – a steady player, but somewhat lazy both in his attacking and defensive work.

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Elmohamady is somebody who doesn’t exactly make it very difficult for his full back to mark him. Either through laziness or lack of faith in his own speed he rarely, if ever, takes his full back to the byline. Instead he performs the same stop and shift motion before attempting to curl in a low right footed cross from a deeper position every single time he has the ball in a wide area. It’s too predictable and not good enough. And yet Bruce failed to recognise that a much bigger, better and more talented attacking threat - Richardson - was standing on the other side of the field underused. In defence too at Arsenal, Elmohamady’s lack of willingness to track back was embarrassing and left John O’Shea hopelessly exposed.

O’Shea and Wes Brown arrived in the summer from Manchester United with 20 major winners medals between them but like one or two at Old Trafford over the years I’ve often wondered if they were being propped up by the talent around them. You wouldn’t expect two experienced players schooled at Old Trafford to be caught out by a team as poor as Wolves doing something as simple as taking all their set pieces quickly but it happened time and time again at Molineux a fortnight ago – something QPR should also look to take advantage of. Still, 19 goals conceded this season is a respectable record and bettered only by Fulham outside the top six. They’ve only conceded nine away from home all season.

It’s in attack where they’re woefully under equipped for all the transfer activity they’ve been involved in. They won 3-0 at Chelsea last season with Danny Welbeck and Asamoah Gyan in scintillating form in attack and had Darren Bent to call on as well. This season they’ve been partnering Nicklas Bendtner with Sessegnon with particularly dire consequences. The reliance on Sessegnon is really hurting them. He’s a handy player, prone to flashes of brilliance and very unpredictable which isn’t a bad quality to have as a striker, but his decision making is dreadfully inadequate and he’s simply not good enough to be such a key player in a Premiership team. He’s one of their better players, and will probably come good under Martin O’Neill, but at Carrow Road he was being asked to link the whole attack together and he fell well short of being able to do that.

As well as a poor attack, their ‘game sense’ has been found wanting on several occasions when I’ve watched them. Even in a win against Blackburn under Martin O’Neill they found themselves playing a team that lost both full backs to injury in the first half and never once did they purposefully go and attack their young and inadequate replacements. At Wolves they had a penalty to make it 2-0, missed it, and then contrived to concede an equaliser in 60 seconds before crumbling to a 2-1 defeat.

One thing Sunderland are good at though is set pieces, particularly free kicks around the penalty area. Seb Larsson won the game against Blackburn with a late free kick, and saved a point at Arsenal with a spectacular strike, and even in the dark Bruce days they were inventive with their dead ball kicks. Larsson top scores this season with five, which tells you a lot.

Finally Bruce never seemed sure who his first choice goalkeeper was between Craig Gordon, the Belgian Simon Mignolet who I’d love to see play on Wednesday because I don’t rate him at all, and former Coventry man Kieran Westwood. The latter seems to be the man in possession at the moment, which means QPR’s ropey defence will have to guard against the enormous clearance you may remember he possesses from his time with the Sky Blues.

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