Alex Neil says he has an 'affinity' with Sunderland as he lays claim to Black Cats' success

Does Alex Neil deserve credit for Sunderland's success? He certainly thinks so.

Michael Graham | May 17, 2023

Alex Neil says he has an 'affinity' with Sunderland as he lays claim to Black Cats' success /

Alex Neil says he has ‘not gripes’ with Sunderland, although he does appear keen to lay claim to the club’s success this season.

Neil walked out on Sunderland to join Stoke in August, leaving the Black Cats to face Norwich without a manager whilst he, still employed by the Wearside club, was in the stands watching the Potters at Blackburn.

However, while Neil was leading Stoke to an unremarkable 16h place finish, Tony Mowbray took Sunderland into the play-offs as the northeast club received rave reviews about their recruitment and style of football.

Neil, though, is adamant he made the right decision – and he wants his share of the credit for Sunderland’s success too.

Asked if he had any regrets about leaving Sunderland, Neil told Stoke-on-Trent Live: “No, I'm really, really relaxed about Sunderland in terms of how well they've done. I genuinely am.

“Some people are quite spiteful and some people want other people to fail because it might look bad on them and all that sort of nonsense. I don't have that at all, I've never had that. My brain doesn't work that way.

“I look at Sunderland and their success – and I want to make clear it’s their success, not my success – but I do take it as a bit of a compliment to me because when you leave a club and the club falls off a cliff, in my opinion, I think you're responsible for that. You're the one that's done the bulk of that work.

“But equally if a club goes on and it's sustainable and it does well and it's still competing, you’ve sort of helped it on its way.

“I've been extremely proud of my time at Sunderland. I went to a massive club who had been trying to get out that league for a long time and I managed to help it do that.

“I thought we gave them a great, solid base. We signed some really good players in the summer and I think we gave them like an excellent pre-season and we got them set up.

“However, from the point of me leaving, Tony and the players and the club and everybody there have done a remarkable job getting them for a team that has just been promoted into the play-offs and they deserve all the credit.

“I had hoped they would win the play-offs, genuinely, because I like all the lads there. I've got a lot of affinity with the people there.

“I know the fans weren’t best pleased with me when I left and that’s fine, I get it. But I genuinely hope the do well. I’ve got absolutely not gripes.

“If anything, it makes me even more determined to make this work because I really do believe in what we're doing here. I believe in the project that I came to try to build and I've got no regrets in because I do believe the bigger picture, not that we need to do better than Sunderland, but that I believe that I can make this work and make this a really successful club.”

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