Jewison Bennette has left the club, one of our players has spoken about the future of his footballing career and another key member of the squad is attracting interest at home and abroad.
BENNETTE LEAVES
Jewison Bennette has left the club via a permanent deal to Ukrainian Premier League outfit LNZ Cherkasy for an undisclosed fee. Bennette joined the club in the summer of 2022 to much excitement and was involved in the senior team not long after signing aged 18. His debut came away to Reading in a 3-0 win and this was quickly followed by another appearance away to Watford, where he netted a late equaliser to earn us a point right in front of the away end. Despite this, the Costa Rican international never managed to earn any starts in the Championship in 2022/23 but he did feature sporadically as a substitute in a number of games and he was handed a place in the starting XI in the FA Cup third round. It was in the FA Cup where his second of two goals for Sunderland came, scoring what turned out to be a consolation in a 3-2 loss to Fulham in a fourth round replay. Halfway through the campaign he travelled to Qatar to play in the World Cup, featuring in all three of his country’s matches.
The following season saw his involvement fall off a cliff for reasons that aren’t entirely clear however. There were some promising signs in the summer of 2023, he started an EFL cup match and then created a memorable moment in a 5-0 thumping of Southampton at the SoL. Coming off the bench in the dying minutes, he intercepted the ball, completed several spins and then crossed it into the danger area for Chris Rigg to head home. This turned out to be his final league game for us, something that would probably be surprising if you told that to any of our fans leaving the stadium after the full time whistle. Due to his lack of game time he was then sent out on loan to Greece but game time was equally as limited, probably due to poor performances in his very limited minutes (just 90 over two matches).
Upon returning to Sunderland he made one final appearance in a League Cup match and then had a few games in the U21 setup prior to disappearing from matchday squads at any level. He was very nearly loaned out to Reading in the summer and then Charlton in January but both moves collapsed late on, a massive shame because both of these clubs could have provided necessary experience in English football. There have been several theories as to why he never made it here, the most valid of these is probably a combination of attitude, bad relationships with head coaches and a high turnover rate for head coaches causing him to be overlooked due to not being given many minutes by the previous one (a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. Had he been loaned out to somewhere in England or Scotland and been successful, rather than Greece, I think he would have had a bit more involvement this season as well. Plus he’s a left winger and asking him to compete with Jack Clarke and then Mundle or Watson likely killed any momentum he had after a bright start to two seasons.
Kristjaan Speakman had this to say: “We believe Jewison needs to play regularly in first-team environment, and due to the progression of our team, opportunities have become increasingly limited for him at Sunderland. This move will enable him to continue his development, and we believe this is the right step for him at an important time. We all wish Jewison well in the next chapter of his career.”
MEPHAM’S FUTURE
Chris Mepham has been talking about the future of his career, with the defender’s contract up at Bournemouth due to expire at the end of the season (albeit with a club option of a further year still available). Recently of course, the Wales international scored his first goal for Sunderland in our 2-1 victory against Cardiff City.
He had this to say: "For me it's about ticking these next 10 games off. We have important Wales games coming up in the summer and I'm sure those conversations will happen at some point. For me I'm trying to stay in the here and now and help this team get back to where we belong. Of course it does play on your mind naturally. As humans we do look to the future. For me it's been no different and you do look at options that might be available to you in the summer. It's also important to focus on the now. I've made it clear I love playing my football here. I love my connection I've made with my teammates and the staff and fans, and if it's a possibility in the summer it's definitely one I'd be open to. But a lot has to happen before that. It got presented to me before I joined the club that it was a quite young inexperienced team and for how well they were doing it was important to have someone like myself with international and Premier League experience to come in and help guide them. It's been a big learning curve for me to take that responsibility when lads are struggling or frustrated to be that person they can lean on. I'd like to think the lads will say I'm very approachable day in, day out and that was always going to be important for me coming here. It did feel like a good fit coming here and on the pitch it's gone really well as well. I've stayed injury free which personally is important. Just getting that exposure to football matches again has been great."
Based on those comments it appears it’s not completely out of the question that he might sign with us permanently but there are a lot of factors that could affect where he ends up. If Bournemouth end up in one of the European competitions, they may want to keep him around for squad depth purposes. If we don’t go up but Wales get off to a decent start in their World Cup qualifiers he might choose to stay here because he has a pretty secured place in the starting XI on which he could use to shore up selection for a future Cymru squad in North America. If we go up he might want to stay for guaranteed top flight minutes. His family still live down south as well, so he could move to Ipswich or Southampton (the latter of which is almost certainly coming down and the former teetering on the edge of hopelessness) for better wages and minutes in the Championship should we fail to get promoted. It’s all just speculative at the moment but we should be quietly confident of keeping hold of him long term in my view.
CHELSEA WANT BELLINGHAM
Chelsea, alongside Bundesliga sides Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen, are interested in bringing in Jobe Bellingham. He’s enjoyed a positive season so far on Wearside, scoring four and assisting three whilst, more often than not, looking entirely comfortable in his attacking midfield role. He will most likely depart Sunderland if we don’t go up this year but if we stay up it’s not unreasonable to expect him to stay on for at least another season. Game time would be very limited for him at Chelsea, certainly in league matches, so he may be better off heading to Germany for his development.
