Attacking fans and alienating players: Five key mistakes that cost Michael Beale Sunderland job

Where did it all go wrong for Michael Beale and how did his Sunderland job become so untenable so quickly?

Michael Graham | Feb 20, 2024

Attacking fans and alienating players: Five key mistakes that cost Michael Beale Sunderland job /

Well, it’s done. Michael Beale’s dreadful spell at Sunderland is over after just 64 days and 12 games.

It’s one of those sackings that you’re not at all shocked to see, but you’re still surprised it happened so quickly.

The truth is, Sunderland made a mistake and Beale was so poor he left the club nowhere to go.

The Sunderland Liz Truss - Where does Michael Beale rank in club's shortest serving managers?

Here, then, are the five key mistakes that cost him the Sunderland job.

Awful start

New managers are meant to come with a bounce, right? I mean, an annual new manager bounce was all that kept Sunderland in the Premier League for half a decade.

It is theoretically when a manager is meant to be at his strongest, when he, and his ideas, are all shiny and new. What it’s not meant to be, though, is so bad that a manager’s first post-match communication with the fans has to be an apology.

That is what it was for Michael Beale at Sunderland, though. The performance against Coventry just before Christmas as appalling, and the 0-3 defeat completely deserved.

Evan at that early stage, what has since followed felt completely inevitable.

Derby surrender

It was always going to be difficult for Sunderland against Newcastle because the Magpies are such a good team nowadays.

That said, it didn’t have to be as hard as it was on the day.

Because they’re our local rivals, Sunderland fans were very aware of how Newcastle play and the strengths they have. We all knew they were a team with an insanely intense high press. Probably, in fact, the best pressing team in the country.

The question was, though, how did Michael Beale not know it?

He set up his Sunderland team to play directly into their hands, setting the kind of traps for ourselves that Eddie Howe would have dreamed about before the game.

We all would have accepted defeat on the day given Newcastle’s quality, but the manner of it left many wondering how on earth Beale could be so incredibly naïve and unprepared.

Attacking the fans

If there was one single date that made a bad situation for Beale a completely hopeless one, it was January 25.

That was the day of his infamous pre-Stoke press conference in which he went on an astonishing attack on the Sunderland fans, dismissing them with sarcasm and trying to tarnish their name to the national press with accusations of bigotry.

Whether his arrogance was so acute that he thought there was ever going to be a way back from that, or whether he had already mentally checked out by then, we’ll probably never know.

What we do know, though, is that no manager has ever attacked the Sunderland fans and kept his job.

Disrespecting the players

Okay, so Michael Beale claims he ‘didn’t see’ Trai Hume when he blanked him on the touchline against Birmingham. The video evidence was pretty damning though. And, okay, Alex Pritchard might have always been a very well-disguised wrong’un in waiting and flight risk.

Then, again, when the on-pitch intensity, to a man, so visibly drops off as quickly as it has at Sunderland in the last two months, you’re much better off looking for a common denominator.

Michael Beale ignoring Trai Hume — Michael Beale has claimed he 'did not see' Trai Hume despite appearing to be looking directly at him

Since Beale was sacked there have been reports of him ‘losing the dressing room’, with players furious they were made to do extra training after defeats while the former Rangers boss gave himself the day off.

When you throw in similar stories from the Rangers dressing room where players were also reportedly far from impressed with Beale’s man-management, the picture becomes quite clear.

I don’t think there can really be any doubt that Beale managed to disenfranchise the players. The weight of evidence that he did is just too compelling.

Losing to the man he was meant to be an upgrade on

Michael Beale was supposed to bring ‘high performance culture’ and represent an ‘obsession with progression,’ remember. None of those were his words, of course, so it’s not really his fault.

However, when he took Sunderland to Birmingham City last week to face his predecessor, he had the chance to prove those who hired him wrong.

Instead, he proved his detractors right, losing a game to the man who he was supposed to be a significant step up from.

It’s difficult to keep your credibility after that.