Sunderland hierarchy have destroyed the trust but opportunity remains

The fallout from the Michael Beale debacle will be felt for some time by the Sunderland hierarchy, but there is still cause of optimism.

Sunderland’s appointment of Michael Beale reminded me of something that probably happened to us all in our childhoods.

It was like that time that your mother took you to buy new school shoes. You had an idea of what you wanted. After all, it was your school and your feet. However, your mother had other ideas. She’d pick out the kind of shoes she wanted her child to be seen in.

Obviously you would try those shoes on. They were almost certainly too stiff, uncomfortable and everything you knew wouldn’t work, but your protestations fell on deaf ears. You’d tell her openly that they were hurting your feet, were a bad fit, and they were just the wrong shoes for you.

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However, you’d then be told, by someone who wasn’t going to wear them and didn’t really know what you needed: ‘give them time, you’ll walk them in.’ You never did. When your shoes are a bad fit, you just know.

After that, it was always difficult to trust your mother to pick your shoes, no matter how many times she might have got it right afterwards.

Similarly, Sunderland fans knew that Michael Beale was a bad fit from the moment rumours started of his appointment.

You can try to paint them as the villains there if you want, say they were just being angry because they didn’t like his accent or facial features. It’s a silly argument, and one that attempts to amplify a stupid minority to drown out the legitimate concerns of the overwhelming majority, but make it if you must.

The truth is, though, that the reason for the outpouring of anger was concern. Fans knew, from the moment that Beale’s name was mentioned, that he was a bad fit and it was headed, quickly, for disaster.

And here we are, just two months later, and Sunderland are looking all but out of the play-offs race, the season lies in tatters, and the feel-good factor has been replaced by universal distrust and disengagement. In other words, Sunderland fans were right, and they have now been proven right. They could see it. In fact, they couldn’t miss it.

That has created an enormous problem for Kristjaan Speakman and Kyril Louis-Dreyfus - because they couldn’t see it, despite it being glaringly obvious to everyone else, and everyone knows they couldn’t see it.

Now, you can forgive a mistake. We all make them. That’s only one part of it though. It’s the second part, the trust part, that really matters. After all, if you get into a car with a driver who careens you headfirst into a clearly visible tree, you may well forgive them for it, but I doubt you’re trusting them to drive you anywhere again.

That is where we are now, with even those fans with a willingness to forgive finding themselves unable to forget.

It couldn’t really have come at a worse moment either. After all, this summer will be the start of what is probably a new phase of ‘the model’. Jack Clarke will be leaving and Sunderland will have money to reinvest.

They will be an established Championship team with money to spend. No more ‘just out of League One,’ no more ‘we have one of the lowest budgets in the division.’ We all know that Jack Clarke will be going, so they will too. Or at least they should.

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Speakman, Louis-Dreyfus, Stuart Harvey and anyone else involved in forward planning have months to prepare now. A new coach is needed, Clarke’s quality must be replaced, and the rest of the team needs to be improved upon too.

Bear in mind also, that there is already distrust around the model due to the sheer unknowns attached to it. This crucial summer will now come under even more scrutiny and the benefit of any doubt will be in short supply. That, like the reaction to Beale, will not be the fans’ fault – it’s on the club.

However, while now is a time of adversity for Sunderland, it is also a time of great opportunity.

I sometimes can’t help but to think back to the feeling after Sunderland beat Leeds at the Stadium of Light in December. A well-coached group of fabulously talented young players put in a superb performance to beat one of the very best teams in the Championship.

It was authoritative, mature, disciplined, and there was a degree of swagger and real control too. That was just two months ago and the future looked incredibly bright, especially with an opportunity to add a next-level head-coach into the mix too.

That opportunity was missed. In fact, it’s hard to imagine how they possibly could have made a bigger pig’s ear out of the whole thing. However, all the things that made it such a great opportunity are still there: the talented young players, the chance to add a next-level head coach, the potential, the hope. It’s all still there, and so is the opportunity.

You would hope, too, that the Beale fiasco will have added a layer of humility to those making the decisions. Kristjaan Speakman and Kyril Louis-Dreyfus have absolute conviction in what they are doing and how they are doing it, and that is a powerful thing that should ultimately be commended.

If they can add just a touch of humility to that too, Sunderland as a club can only be better for it.

In the meantime, though, they are going to have to accept a heightened level of distrust from the supporters. Speakman was bullish about their strategy when talking to the press after the January transfer window, and so was Louis-Dreyfus in a recent interview with the Financial Times.

That’s fine when you have some credit in the bank behind you, but that has all been blown on a bad bet on Michael Beale. That credit was initially earned by action, not words and that is what it will take again to rebuild it.

Bailing out on Beale and admitting their mistake was a good start, but there’s an awful long way still to go if they want to regain the trust of the Sunderland support. 

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