The 2023/24 season started off as one of so much promise and expectation, our sporting director said we were aiming for top two and most of our fans expected we’d be pushing for play offs at the very least. We finally brought in not just one, two or three strikers but four of them after a dearth of anyone in that position for an uncomfortably long time and we had a well liked coach who was able to work very efficiently with our young squad. It seemed like we had everything we needed to succeed and yet, for a multitude of reasons, it all went borderline-horribly wrong and we ended up finishing a whole 10 positions lower than in the season prior. That means the next summer transfer window needs to be very carefully navigated and if our recruitment staff aren’t at their best we could well be tossed into a relegation battle next season but if they are, this could very well have just been a blip and some valuable lessons learned.
The very start of the season was a bit of a dampener considering how positive the feel around the club had been throughout pre-season. A defeat to a newly promoted side wasn’t too inspiring but in hindsight this wasn’t actually that poor of a result considering where Ipswich ended up finishing. Next up was Crewe in the League Cup and this was an awful result, being forced to try and equalise against a team in League Two was a touch humiliating but the worst part of this game was it convinced everyone Bradley Dack would be a good player for us… after he came off the bench and pointed at Jewison Bennette a few times. I guess that may allude to the need for some experienced heads in the midfield to give the younger players some needed direction though. Chris Rigg scored his first senior goal as well which was a nice moment, a shame about the shootout though. An awful performance away to Preston capped off the bad run at the start and the fanbase went into a mini-panic.
We then started winning and playing at our best between then and the start of October, Bellingham scored a brace to win us the game vs Rotherham, there was the fantastic 5-0 drubbing of Southampton, Colback being sent off when we beat QPR and solid away wins at Blackburn and Sheffield Wednesday And by the time we beat Watford at home (a lovely goal by Niall Huggins in that game by the way) we sat fourth and nobody was complaining. Were there some warning signs that we perhaps weren’t as good as our form suggested though? I think there were in hindsight, there was some reliance on Jack Clarke, there was of course the defeat to Cardiff at home and we had to come from behind against QPR when they were down to ten men to win. Of course we were winning so any discontent was put to the back of people’s minds because at the end of the day that’s all that matters. None of our strikers had scored yet but that was okay because they’d start scoring sooner rather than later, Hemir and Burstow had come close a few times after all.
That brings us to the first turning point of the season, one for the worse absolutely. The 4-0 defeat at home to Middlesbrough and there was a massive amount of unluckiness to this game to be fair. Dan Neil was sent off by a referee clearly more concerned with looking tough on the Sky cameras than doing his job properly. Sending someone off for swearing? I mean come on. We ended up shipping four in the second half but it’s hard to blame the players for that. Unfortunately it was the start of us not being able to find any extended period of good form for the rest of the season and for that you absolutely can blame the players. The next two were a defeat to Alex Neil’s Stoke City (typical) and a narrow loss to high-flying Leicester City (we should have had a penalty) followed and three defeats in a row felt like a sucker punch after the fantastic form we’d just had. Feeling aggrieved at the refereeing didn’t help the mood either.
We had a run of three games without defeat to follow that up, which helped. Watching Bellingham score against Birmingham City as we beat them after what their fans had said about him when we first signed him felt vindicating but there was of course the disappointment of not taking three points from Swansea when they went down to ten men and then the inglorious end of Tony Mowbray’s time on Wearside came. We lost to Plymouth Argyle and then lost unceremoniously at the hands of Huddersfield Town. A draw away to Millwall confirmed his sacking and it was a controversial decision but not an incorrect one in my view.
The goal at the start of the season was to get promoted and when we sacked Mowbray our form hardly looked like we were on a trajectory to qualify for the top six, therefore deciding to part ways with him wasn’t a bad decision. The bad decisions came after. What we did miss when he left was the rapport he had with the fanbase and the understanding he had of North East football, that’s not something that can be easily replaced and not many head coaches or managers have had over the years here. It’s easy to criticise the choice to replace him because of what we did afterwards but I maintain this wasn’t a bad decision.
Rumours of Will Still swirled and excitement ensued, Mike Dodds became a hero for being responsible for two wins over West Brom and Leeds, we were back in the top six and on top of the world. Then the new week began, Still fizzled out and Michael Beale emerged as the top contender vying for the job and to cap it all off we lost in a dull affair to Bristol City.
In steps Beale, the fanbase was against him from the start, they were calling for his sacking before he’d even had his photograph holding the scarf and it’s hard to blame anyone for feeling that way after going from the excitement of a young Will Still to Mike Beale, a man whose reputation amongst QPR and Rangers fans caused alarm bells to ring immediately. He seemed arrogant and a bit of a snake, men like that don’t last long here and indeed he didn’t.
There were some positives to his time here though, he got a bit more of a tune out of our strikers than Mowbray did. Rusyn scoring twice, Burstow once and we won our first away game for three months when we played Hull City. The negatives far, far outweigh the upsides though.
Surrendering to the Mags in terms of playstyle, dropping points to Rotherham, the hostile interviews and refusing to shake the hand of Trai Hume in his final game. Anytime he seemed to be starting to build anything good he’d manage to throw it away one way or another. An appointment everyone knew was terrible and Speakman went and did it regardless, major mistake number three of the season (after not bringing in an experienced striker in January and the Black Cats Bar debacle before the derby).
Play offs weren’t totally out of the question as the sunset and we left Birmingham, four points from 6th with 12 games to go. Then the board gave up essentially, Mike Dodds was announced to be in charge for the remainder of the season and that two game losing streak turned into six. The football was awful, the atmosphere was even worse and people started wanting the season to just be over as quickly as possible. Some of us were even scared of relegation being a possibility but the awful football meant the games started having a preseason-esque vibe about them and 0-0 draws became the order of the day. One defeat from our next six ensured the season didn’t become catastrophic and the bright spells included wins away to West Brom and Cardiff and holding Leeds United to a draw. Three games to go and some good results against sides who were not the best in the world would be critical to keep the neutral mood alive and offer us some hope going into next season. We didn’t manage that and lost all three, Millwall was one of the worst games I’ve ever watched, Watford can be summarised best by Patrick Roberts missing an absolute sitter. What a terrible season it’s been for him, he needs to improve next season massively, one assist throughout a whole Championship campaign is nowhere near good enough. The season ended with a whimper as we capitulated early to Sheffield Wednesday and hardly anyone stayed back for the lap of honour (if that’s the right term to use for this season).
The transfer window massively worries me, we are most likely going to lose Jack Clarke, Dan Ballard, Neil and maybe Patterson. That’s the core of the squad being ripped out and any team in world football would find that difficult to deal with. On top of that Corry Evans is probably going to leave and therefore the last real bit of quality experience we have. We could be in real trouble if we don’t adequately replace those players. On the other hand though that will give us an almighty transfer budget to work with, Speakman has done well with much smaller budgets in the past so optimistically he should be able to work wonders with the tens of millions of pounds we will receive. If we continue down the path that we’ve gone down in the last three transfer windows though, we will be in real trouble and the quality our side possesses now will evaporate entirely; that’s a major worry considering we’ve just finished 16th. The model is a good basis but we need to be willing to pay a fee for players 25 and above at this critical time to replace the talent we already have. Of course we should try and keep a hold of some of the players we have, Clarke is gone realistically but Neil supports us and maybe he can be swayed, but we also need to prepare for every situation. Viktor Johannson has a release clause of £900k we should be all over that as potential competition for Patterson or even his replacement but he’s 25 so are we willing to pay a fee? It’s doubtful but we simply have to be that’s not a large expense for a good Championship level goalkeeper.
Moving onto the head coach we simply have to get it right. I like the look of Will Still, he’s far more than just an inexperienced manager who played a video game. He’s been working under some tough conditions at Reims and been competing for a European place with them despite these. The smallest budget in the league, they lost their best players in January and he’s still got them in a comfortable mid table position. There’s no compensation to worry about with him now having left the club. We should be doing everything we can to try and get his services. If we bring the wrong man in things could go wrong very quickly and a fanbase not in a patient mood will be tested even further, that’s another worry I have. Whoever we bring in will set the tone for the rest of the campaign, we can’t get off to a stumbling start.
An experienced striker is the second most pivotal thing about summer, without one we will falter and at the very best fail to be vying for promotion and at worst? It’s not great to think about let’s just put it that way. We missed out on Kieffer Moore in January, if someone likes him becomes available again we have to sign them. It’s simple to say ‘just get it done’, but there has to be a degree of expectation now after what the last few months have brought us, we are Sunderland Association Football Club we should expect to at keats finish top half in the second tier and compete with every club in the league for signings rather than giving up at the first sign of an uphill struggle.
Do I think it’s time for KLD and Speakman to pack up and leave? No I don’t because that would lead to even more uncertainty but if they get it wrong over the next two to four months then some very big questions of both of them will need to be asked.
