The appointment of Michael Beale to replace Tony Mowbray was one that was met with ambivalence from the vast majority of Sunderland’s fanbase. In recent weeks however, it seems that Beale has been able to at least partially turn his reputation around amongst our fans.
Although this is only a partial turnaround, considering how untenable his position seemed in the middle of January perhaps it should be considered as a rather impressive feat.
Replacing such a popular head coach in Tony Mowbray wouldn’t have been an easy task for anyone, especially not for Michael Beale.
Rangers fans were relentless in their criticisms of him, probably for justifiable reasons that often related to his lack of a charismatic personality or his authoritarian approach to squad management. Queens Park Rangers fans were certainly not lenient with him either.
Mowbray was the opposite to Beale in many respects. He’s from the North East and arguably understands the region in a much greater capacity than London born Beale. His press conferences were entertaining and he usually gave good answers and this helped to foster a fantastic relationship between the fans and head coach.
Beale had, up until recently at least, failed to even come close to matching this. In fact his press conferences and his perceived attitude towards the fans became one of the major gripes against him. Calling the fans ‘background noise’ was and is unacceptable.
His most recent press conference avoided inflammatory language though and that may be classified as a bare minimum expectation from a head coach of any team but it at least represents a marked improvement.
It is also probably fair to say that Beale’s own words and actions weren’t the only thing that tarnished his image early on, things far outside of his control contributed (I’d argue) equally towards our fans largely not liking him.
The whole fiasco with the Black Cats Bar prior to the game against Newcastle, whilst in no way Beale’s fault led to an adverse reaction to the ownership and a lack of movement in the January window until late on boiled over some frustrations with Kristjaan Speakman. If you’re coming into a club where the fanbase at best aren’t that keen on you, you need the fans to at least trust the ownership and recruitment staff. At least then they could give you the benefit of the doubt.
Of course none of that was Beale’s fault and there’s an argument that the negative reaction to Beale was partially a byproduct of other frustrations surrounding the club.
If you’re unpopular, not that great at appearing in front of the media and have had very few nice things said about you from your former clubs there’s one thing that you absolutely need to get right; results.
To say that his first game went wrong would be an understatement, we were absolutely atrocious and consequently were hammered 3-0 at home. The opponent didn’t exactly help. There’s always going to be animosity between Sunderland and Coventry and as the stands practically emptied and chants about Tony Mowbray echoed around the ground, you’d be forgiven entirely if you wanted Michael Beale out of Sunderland as quickly as possible.
Social media would not have been a good place to be looking at for Michael Beale that night but things turned around a little after this. We beat playoff rivals Hull City away from home, Beale was hardly credited for this though.
Jack Clarke’s brilliance may have bailed us out again and Hull definitely missed some sitters but it was our first win away from home since we beat a terrible Sheffield Wednesday all the way back in September. An important result then as it showed we could go away from home to a difficult opponent and come away with all three points.
Rotherham away was up next and the way we set up was the main reason why we couldn’t beat the worst team in the division. We bounced back with a solid 2-0 win over another rival for the top six immediately afterward though, Preston North End. A rather mixed bag then but removing the fact it was Michael Beale who had gotten these results would lead to the conclusion that the new man in the dugout was doing alright for his first four games. Seven points from 12 and back into the play off places. There still seemed to be little appetite for Beale long term though and the next three games brought any warming towards him crashing down dramatically.
Newcastle at home for only your fifth game in charge would be a tough task for anybody and losing 3-0 to a side who had been involved in the Champions League earlier on in the season perhaps shouldn’t be something to be too ashamed about. Of course they are our bitterest rivals however that doesn’t change the difference in resources possessed by both teams. We didn’t set up to have a go though and that can be interpreted as cowardice by the man in charge, though overall it was in all likelihood a game we’d lose no matter how we set up.
The lowest point was still to come though, we lost two on the bounce to Ipswich and Hull. Ipswich away wasn’t a great performance and Hull at home was awful to say the least. We fell out of the playoffs and appeared to be totally flat in that 1-0 defeat to Hull. Two unattractive defeats and #Bealeout rocketed up to third place on Twitter’s trending page in the UK.
It seemed like his time in charge would come to an unceremonious end, being sacked in the next few weeks when we would inevitably drop points at home to Stoke and be demolished by Middlesbrough.
Neither of those things happened though and Beale managed to get four points from those games. Mason Burstow and Nazariy Rusyn scored, showing that his tactical system was finally getting our strikers involved, something our previous head coach had failed to do.
A win against Plymouth followed, the second half was definitely the best demonstration of how Michael Beale wants us to play. If you’re being critical you could say that Stoke and Plymouth are teams in the bottom half that we should be beating and that Beale hardly deserves praise for winning these games. But Stoke had lost just once in eight Championship games prior to facing us and Plymouth just once in nine. That shows they weren’t just bad but we were also good. Middlesbrough wasn’t a win but the last time we went to Middlesbrough away in the league and got a result was 2009.
There is no guarantee that it’s going to work out and the next three games are key, all against teams in the bottom half that we should be winning if we want to keep up our chase for the top six. Beale has, though, bought himself some valuable time through changing the system to allow our strikers to have a reasonable chance of putting the ball into the back of the net and he’s now making earlier subs (seemingly having learned from a massive criticism directed towards him). Resting Jobe Bellingham proved beneficial and not being scared to use the obvious quality of Leo Hjelde early on are yet more reasons to believe that he can be successful here and that he is a competent tactician.
91% of our fans are optimistic for the remainder of the season (according to a poll we ran on Twitter), compare that to the poll we ran immediately after the defeat against Hull where only 5% thought he could be a success here and it goes to show that temperance in press conferences and a few good results can begin to turn around seemingly even the most unsalvageable situations as head coach.
