Lee Johnson has explained the problem with the Stadium of Light's pitch, and spoke about the mistakes made "many moons ago"...
GROUNDSTAFF
"I have to be careful because I certainly don't want to disrespect anybody. I said that our groundstaff are as good as it gets, both at the Stadium of Light and the Academy."
PLAYING STYLE
"But I've gone into the history of this because the pitch is one of the most important aspects for the way I want to play. It is so important that the ball moves with backspin rather than like tumbleweed, which slows the game down and means we can't play the one-touch football that our number tens and our forward players are suited to. However, we are where we are."
HISTORY
"Historically, many moons ago, the club probably laid the wrong pitch. I heard the story where the players were asked, in Premier League days, which pitch they would prefer, and one game they won 2-0 and another game they lost 1-0, and they decided to choose the pitch based on the result."
WRONG PITCH
"So there was a lot of money spent initially on probably the wrong type of pitch - not necessarily a bad pitch, but you have to remember that the Stadium of Light is a big stadium. It doesn't get a lot of air through it, and it doesn't get a lot of light, and that becomes a problem."
TRAINING GROUND
"Our training ground, for example, is in absolutely A1 nick and it has exactly the same surface as the stadium pitch. That's because it gets a lot more light at the academy, and the airflow is constant because the breeze is there all year round!"
COST
"So you need to now move into your Desso-type stuff, which comes at a big cost. You can't do it in January, and there are concerts and all that happening [in the summer]. I know the club will invest in the right things and they have done, there has been a lot of money spent on the training ground pitches so that we can develop young players."
GOOD PITCHES
"I'm not griping at anybody in particular, I'm just saying that for us to truly play the top entertaining game that everybody wants to see, a good pitch is a very big part of it. When we went to Crewe, for example, you could see how good that pitch was on the day, but a lot of that is to do with the way the stands are structured and the light gets in and the air gets through."
