Six signs that suggest Tony Mowbray is struggling to avoid Sunderland sack

Is it time for a serious discussion about Tony Mowbray's Sunderland future? There are plenty of reasons to suggest so.

Michael Graham | Nov 30, 2023

Six signs that suggest Tony Mowbray is struggling to avoid Sunderland sack /

That time has come again. If you’re a Sunderland fan, it happens every year, without fail. It’s the time to choose whether you think a head coach should be sacked or not.

This time it’s Tony Mowbray, but we’ve all been here before. The name is the only thing that ever really changes here, if we’re honest.

We’ve been through the good initial spell, the sticky patch, smashed through the high, and are now somewhere between the decline setting in and the seemingly inevitable axe falling.

Generally I am always someone who advocates for stability and sticking with managers, and I remain on the fence with Mowbray. He does bring a lot of upside and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. You are unlikely to find a ‘safer’ option, nor a more experienced one. The players speak highly of him and the football has been superb at times under his tenure.

However, there are also some very worrying signs emerging that we can probably all see, and they are all pointing squarely at a manager at best struggling to turn things around and at worst already on borrowed time.

Striker struggles

Let’s start with the most obvious one, the one that doesn’t seem to go away no matter what.

Last season was one thing. Within about three weeks of taking over at Sunderland, Mowbray had lost both Ross Stewart and Ellis Simms to injury. That wasn’t Mowbray’s fault, nor was Stewart’s new injury in January or the recruitment team’s failure to replace them in the winter transfer window. Fair enough.

But Joe Gelhardt comes in, and he struggles to score goals. Luis Hemir comes in, Mason Burstow comes in, Nazariy Rusyn comes in, Eliezer Mayenda comes in… nothing changes.

Now there may not be a player there as good as Stewart, but the fact we are heading into December now without a single goal from a Sunderland striker is remarkable – and there has to be a common denominator.

Nazariy Rusyn - Sunderland — Nazariy Rusyn among Sunderland strikers failing to score this season / IMAGO

You could probably make a case for blaming the strikers if they were all missing chances left right and centre. That would point towards the individuals. However, the strikers are not getting chances at all, and at this stage that points squarely towards the tactics, as it is the one thing connecting them all.

It doesn’t help matters either, of course, sticking your lone striker on the right wing and chucking Patrick Roberts up front for sizable chunks of time during home matches.

Scattergun substitutions

Something that is becoming a big frustration for just enough everyone watching Sunderland right now is the somewhat scattergun approach to substitutions.

I appreciate managers are often on a hiding to nothing when it comes to substitutions. It’s easy for us to sit in the stands not making the decisions yet claiming to have better answers.

However, this isn’t about what could have happened with different changes, it’s about what is happening with Mowbray’s.

Routinely, Mowbray’s answer is to just throw attacking players onto the pitch in one multiple change. Against Huddersfield he was at it again with Abdoullah Ba, Alex Pritchard, Bradley Dack and Luis Hemir brought on and Adil Aouchiche, Patrick Roberts, Eliezer Mayenda and Jobe Bellingham going off.

Nothing changed, and it’s hard to see how it could. There was certainly nothing tactical about it, and that suggests there is no real plan behind it.

You could understand it a lot more if it was in response to some kind of problem. If, for example, Bar had been sent on with clear instructions to hug the line and go down the outside to stretch a compact defence. That wasn’t the case, though. Ba just did exactly the same as what Roberts had been doing, but cutting inside on his weaker foot rather than his stronger one.

Perhaps Jack Clarke could have been switched to the right? Perhaps Huggins brought on to offer something on the overlap? Perhaps another striker and go two up front?

No, none of that. There is no problem solving from the touchline. All that is offered is throwing different players at it and hoping they’re they ones able to produce some individual magic on this occasion.

Mowbray’s comments after the defeat to Huddersfield serve to highlight his apparent attitude on this.

"Burstow played seven or eight games on the bounce, Rusyn has played three or four on the bounce, last night was Mayenda's opportunity,” Mowbray said.

"We hope that one of them catches fire and can start banging in the goals. For centre-forwards, their job is to put the ball in the back of the net.”

He’s waiting for players to hit form to effect change. That’s not really coaching – it’s hoping.

Repeated patterns

There is no question that bad luck plays a part in football. but generally speaking it can only really explain isolated incidents.

Against Huddersfield, it almost felt like a repeat of Plymouth in the sense that Sunderland dominated the ball and the match, but couldn’t score enough goals while the opposition were able to score from few opportunities.

Plymouth was also a repeat of the Swansea game – or at least it would have been had the ten-men Swans not missed a penalty. The Swansea game a repeat of the Leicester one, and so on.

However, if it’s happening very routinely it’s not bad luck at all, it’s not a pattern.

You can see that pattern illustrated in the graphic below. In it is the ‘momentum’ graph for the games against Huddersfield (top), Plymouth (middle) and Swansea (bottom) and is designed to illustrate which team is ‘dominating’ which part of the match.

Sunderland momentum — Sunderland 'momentum' charts / FotMob

It’s clear that Sunderland are having a huge amount of the ball yet failing to turn ‘dominance’ into goals and then being caught out at the back.

One graph like that could be put down to bad luck. Three games from the last four matches is bad design. All of that ‘dominance’ and the only point you win is thanks to a penalty save against ten men? Is that really ‘dominance’ at all?

It looks more like opposition teams setting up against you with a clear plan and being able to pull it off. Allow Sunderland the ball in non-threatening areas, double up on the wingers, break at speed when they over-commit.

We are seeing it as a repeatable pattern, a coach being out-coached by his opposite number.

Publicly criticising individuals

There is a fine line between saying it how it is and hanging players out to dry.

It’s important at this point to stress that part of Mowbray’s popularity with Sunderland fans has been, and still is, that he doesn’t try to bulls**t supporters. A bad performance is called a bad performance and excuses are rare.

There has perhaps been the odd ‘was he watching the same game as me?’ moment, but not with anything even approaching regularity.

Since the Plymouth defeat there have been a few worrying signs of Mowbray being a little too publicly critical of individuals.

He said Rusyn was hauled off for ‘missing opportunities’ and ‘running offside’ at Home Park, and also said Pierre Ekwah had been ‘not up to speed lately.’ Those things could be true but saying them publicly seemed very unnecessary.

Luis Hemir - Sunderland striker been heavily criticised by Tony Mowbray / IMAGO

He has also been very critical before of Luis Hemir, accusing him of ‘missing some pretty big chances’ and also called his professionalism into question.

There is just something that feels a little off about it all and generally speaking, history tells us that once a manager starts publicly criticising individual players, it’s generally due to feeling the pressure himself.

It’s certainly never a good thing anyway, and rarely ends especially well.

Results

The next reason is the thing that never lies – results. Sunderland were highly unlikely to be genuine top two contenders this season, despite what Kristjaan Speakman might have said about the ‘aims’ for the season last summer.

Jack Clarke - Sunderland frustration — Jack Clarke - unable to prevent recent run of poor Sunderland form :: IMAGO / Ross Johnston

Are Sunderland a team who should be losing to the bottom six teams with this kind of regularity, though?

Since beating Watford at the start of October, Sunderland have won just twice in eight games and lost five of them. That is just seven points from a possible 24, and one of those was thanks to a penalty save against a bottom-half team with ten men.

It hasn’t been an especially challenging run of games either. Top if the table Leicester City were in there, but so were Huddersfield (currently 21st), Plymouth (20th), Swansea (18th) and Stoke (17th).

In fact, in this wretched run of two wins in eight games, the only teams currently in the top half that Sunderland have played are Leicester and Middlesbrough (10th).

Whichever way you want to look at it, it looks pretty dismal.

Replacement rumours last April

Internet transfer rumours (unless properly sourced like Sunderland Nation exclusives, of course!) should be treated with a pinch of salt. We all know that.

The exception to that rule is probably Fabrizio Romano.

Excl: Sunderland appreciate Francesco Farioli as new head coach for the next season, he’s on top of their list. ⚪️🔴 #SAFC

Farioli, considered talented coach — he’s only 34 years old and clubs in Italy, Portugal [including Braga], England and Turkey have approached him. pic.twitter.com/0vOLdhhDpQ
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) April 24, 2023

Last spring he reported that Sunderland wanted to hire Francesco Farioli. They didn't of course, and whether Farioli was even realistic for Sunderland after a cash-rich Ligue 1 club based in the south of France made him an offer is another debate entirely.

However, the story left us with only two possible conclusions. Either Fabrizio Romano got it wrong for probably the first and only time - or Tony Mowbray did not go into the summer with strong backing from above him.

That is significant, because those rumours came out when Mowbray's stock at Sunderland was at its highest.

It was probably just positive public opinion that saved him in the end, but it if the club were not all that bothered about keeping him when he was in his strongest, it feels unlikely that he can rely on their backing when his positioned has weakened and the positive public opinion has waned.