What can Sunderland expect tactically from Michael Beale?

Michael Beale appears to be a good fit tactically for Sunderland and has impressive endorsements, but talking himself into trouble is a distinct danger.

Sunderland have settled on Michael Beale for their new head coach, and it would be fair to say that it is a decision that has not been met with much popularity from the supporters.

That is putting it mildly, of course. The reaction has been little short of furious indignation. Well, at least it has on social media. What the rest of the Sunderland-supporting world is thinking, I don’t know.

Things move so quickly nowadays though that we are rapidly moving through the five stages of grief. We have emerged from denial and crashed through anger. For some, bargaining has already begun and in that regard, I wouldn’t like to be reading Kristjaan Speakman’s Twitter notifications today.

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For the super quick, the depression may have already started too. ‘No point, is there? Always like this. Why bother? Can’t even be bothered to care anymore to be honest.’

Soon, though, acceptance will emerge from beyond the horizon. Some may already be there.

‘He might be brilliant? It could be a genuine masterstroke? We didn’t really want Alex Neil or Tony Mowbray but they got those appointments right? Mike Dodds turned out to class and no one thought he would be… Well, nothing we can do, just got to get behind the players. Do that and we’ll be fine. Keep the faith, ha’way the lads…’

Whatever stage you’re at, it looks to be all but certain that Michael Beale will be the next head coach of Sunderland. ‘Beale-ball’ is coming to Wearside, whether we want it or not.

But, the question remains, what exactly is ‘Beale-ball’?

🚨🔴⚪️ Sunderland have reached an agreement with Michael Beale as former Rangers manager will be appointed as new head coach.

He was the ‘secret’ candidate as Will Still deal was never sealed or closed.

Announcement for Beale as new #SAFC coach could be today. pic.twitter.com/cdTWO4j6xg

— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) December 15, 2023

The answer to that question is actually very difficult to determine due to one major factor: Whenever Beale tries to explain it, it’s hidden beneath a tonne of vague LinkedIn-style ‘keywords’ and other middle-manager speak.

It’s genuinely very difficult to figure out what he’s on about, like he has his own unique language that he’s made up yet thinks everyone else understands.

Well, almost unique. It’s the same kind of weird way in which Kristjaan Speakman talks, so it’s probably becoming clearer why he was able to wow the Sunderland sporting director in his interview.

“What if situations,” “own the pitch,” “turn dial to maximum”, “take the handbrake off,” and so on.

“Own the pitch, own the ball, ‘win’ in both penalty boxes and possess a desirable mentality and character." That are his core ideas in his own words. Sigh. This article is going to take more work than I hoped for a weekend morning.

I mean, yes, all well and good, and I suppose football is a simple game at its core (or at least it used to be), but there is a large degree of stating the obvious there. ‘Be good at football’ is not exactly a tactical philosophy, so is there anything tangible beneath that top-layer of needlessly meaningless waffle?

Let’s see if we can break it down and figure it out.

‘Owning the pitch’

(Translation: Out of possession)

“If you’re more organised you’ll run less, you’ll play with less stress and be ready to attack,” Beale says about how he wants his teams to play when out of possession.

“It makes sense to block the middle of the pitch because your goal is in the middle, it makes sense to keep the play in front and outside of you and then to press from in to out.”

Michael Beale doesn't seem to talk properly...  :: IMAGO / Sportimage

Okay, he has managed to stumble upon at least a little bit of clarity there, probably completely accidentally. He’s essentially saying that he wants defending to be the first phase of the attack.

Pressing with the intention of filtering the opposition out wide and into the middle third of the pitch is something that we can probably expect to see, which may come at the expense of some of the high pressing we have grown accustomed to under Tony Mowbray.

Beale’s does not appear to especially favour an aggressive high press as he prefers to draw defences out first so there is space behind them to attack once possession is won.

For this purpose, Beale likes a high defensive line so the middle third of the pitch is harder for the opposition to play through and easier for his own team to smother.

This dedication to a high line of defence also prevails even when defending a lead.

‘Owning the ball’

(Translation: In possession)

“[I’m] obsessed with overloading and upsetting the opposition defensive line,” Beale says.

“In my early days as a coach I was very caught up with playing out from the back and playing through [midfield]. That’s important, but the final outcome is ‘how much disruption are you creating in that backline?’

“Utopia for me is finding a group of players that have freedom to rotate in the final third.”

Michael Beale 'obsessed with creating attacking overloads.  / IMAGO

One of the more interesting things about Beale’s football is that he likes to swamp an opposition defence and create a lot of numerical overloads.

While a lot of the football under Tony Mowbray was pretty, it’s fair to say that we all shared a frustration that too much of it was played in front of the opposition defence.

Full backs will be asked to overlap and midfielders to break into the box. That is often facilitated by one of the central midfielders dropping back to make a back three, freeing the full backs to do it.

In this sense, if should be quite different to Mowbray in the sense that while he rotated a full back to create an overload in central areas and release the midfielders, Beale prefers to rotate a midfielder into defence to free the full backs and create overloads in wide areas.

What that kind of football requires, though, is an awful lot of running power and energy in the side. At Sunderland, he will certainly have that.

Beale has explained his belief that the wider areas are key to attacking play because while the opposition can “dictate the length of the pitch” with their defensive line, they cannot do anything about the width. Therefore, width is the way to maximise the space you have to play in.

‘Flexibility’

(Translation: Formations)

"What are the fans demanding, what are the board hiring you to do and what is the best fit for the players?

"I really love Carlo Ancelotti because I think he has proven at every club he has been at in the last 15-20 years, and he has worked at all the big ones with the big players, that he is able to find a way to win with the players that are at that club. And when he leaves that club, the club is generally stable.

"For me, formations are nowhere near as important as the players who are in them."

One of the first questions we always ask when we get a new manager or head coach, and we have a lot of practice of that as Sunderland fans, is what formation does he play?

Well, Beale claims he doesn’t have a preferred formation because he doesn’t believe you can be that inflexible. He says formations should be dictated by the players you have rather than the ones you want, and a coach has to find a way to maximise the players he has.

What he has said about formations, though, is that he splits his players into two sections: ‘core’ positions and those with freedom.

In the below image, his ‘core’ players are in white and have set positional responsibilities and duties, while those in blue are free do rotate. Remember, an ability to rotate in the final third is his ‘utopia.’ Honestly, why can’t he just talk like a normal person?

Core players and rotating ones :: Coaches Voice / YouTube

So, again, we may see a departure from what Mowbray was doing, which was Sunderland playing one very specific way, towards what Mike Dodds has done, which is different tactics for different games.

Bad manager, exceptional coach?

Something that should be noted is that many are looking at Beale’s failure at Rangers and judging him definitively on it. However, his role would be very different at Sunderland.

We have spoken about the various ‘head coach vs manager’ arguments to the point of exhaustion now, but the fact remains that there is a big difference between the two.

If Beale’s Rangers time was definitive about him, then it was definitive about Michael Beale the manager. This will be his first head coach role in which he will have no responsibility for transfers, and it may well suit him immeasurably better.

At Rangers, and QPR to a lesser extent, he was asked to be the architect. At Sunderland, they already have the plans and are hiring him as the master builder.

In that role, in which he is allowed to concentrate solely on coaching what he is given and preparing for matches, there is cause for optimism.

Steven Gerrard, with whom he worked at Rangers and Aston Villa, as said Beale did ‘special’ things on the training pitch and given Gerrard’s career we can all agree it is some endorsement. Similarly, how much Gerrard’s managerial career nosedived when separated from Beale adds more credibility to that.

Steven Gerrard relied heavily on Michael Beale / IMAGO

Former Sunderland striker Jermain Defoe also worked with Beale and Gerrard at Rangers, and he was certainly glowing about Beale’s coaching quality too.

“The job he’s done so far has been really good," Defoe said. “He’s a top coach. "Mick has been coaching for about 20 years all over the world. Tactically he’s amazing.

"I learned so much from Mick, even at my age with all my experience in the game I was still able to learn a lot from Mick. I still speak to him now.

“The players love him. Every training session was good. He’s really clever, loves his football. He’s obsessed.”

Another very high calibre endorsement came from Argentinian world cup winner Emiliano Martinez, who worked with Beale and Gerrard at Aston Villa.

"It's the first time in 14 to 15 years of my career that the assistant coach does all the talking,” the goalkeeper said. ”He does all the training sessions, he takes all the important meetings.

“He knows so much about football, it's just incredible. With Michael, we felt him and Stevie G are both the managers."

Who’s going to coach the coach?

While all this is well and good in theory, the fact is that Beale’s manner of communication with the fans is going to cut very little mustard at Sunderland.

It will be fine as long as he is winning games, but the David Brent style management speak was despised when Lee Johnson did it and only tolerated (barely) from Speakman because he is delivering progress.

Lee Johnson - former Sunderland coach awful in interviews :: IMAGO / Pro Sports Images

Part of the popularity of both Alex Neil and Tony Mowbray at Sunderland was due to them being very straight talkers and how well that comes across to supporters.

Sunderland has proud working class traditions as a football club, and the moment it sounds like a coach is trying to talk down to the clubs’ fans, it immediately gets the heckles up among the support.

And Sunderland is a club at which the message and communication is very important right now. They are trying something completely new in terms of their ‘model’ and what they are doing goes against the instincts of many of the club’s most loyal fans.

Beale will need to find a way of communicating to those supporters in a much more forthright and concise way than he has shown so far in his career.

Clearly, judging by the endorsements his coaching has from some very high-calibre footballers, he doesn’t struggle at all to get his message across to his squad, which is to his credit.

A common theme from supporters of clubs he has managed though is that they find him genuinely quite antagonistic in how he speaks to them. Sunderland, frankly, is probably the last club where you can expect to get away with that, and someone needs to be very aware of it moving forward. 

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