Did we all overrate Alex Neil at Sunderland?

Alex Neil's struggles at Stoke raise an interesting question for Sunderland fans.

Michael Graham | Jan 3, 2023

Did we all overrate Alex Neil at Sunderland? /

When you’re a Sunderland fan, there is never a shortage of former managers to keep an eye on.

Most of them, of course, were sacked and incur no real reaction now. A couple of them still do, though, and the nature of his departure ensures Alex Neil is one of them.

Much of that is down to the fact that Neil was popular and successful at Sunderland, although he also did three of the most triggering things any manager can do: Walk out, never commit to or buy into the club, and have the sheer temerity to criticise others as a parting shot.

His move to Stoke does not seem to be working out for him, though. The Potters are just three points above the relegation zone and the fans are already calling for him to be sacked.

It all leaves us with a bit of a question to consider: did we overrate Alex Neil at Sunderland?

It’s very easy to stray from the analytical into revisionist territory here, so let me start by saying Alex Neil did extremely well at Sunderland.

He lost just three games as Sunderland manager, and for one of those he wasn’t even at the game, while another came away from home after a first-half red card. Given Neil was in charge of Sunderland for 24 games in total, that’s good going by anyone’s standards.

It’s too easy as well to say that getting Sunderland promoted from League One is just what any decent manager should be doing, because we saw first hand how tough others found it. Winning a play-off final with Sunderland is, as history will tell you, no easy task as well.

So the purpose of this is not to attempt to diminish anything that Neil did at Sunderland.

There is little doubt, though, that Neil’s struggles at Stoke have cast doubt over just how good and impactful he is as a coach. He has won just six and lost nine of his first 20 games in charge. That is actually an almost identical record as the last 20 games of Stoke predecessor Michael O’Neil. In other words, he has made no impact at all.

	Games	Wins	Draws	defeats
Michael O'Neil (Last 20 games for Stoke)	20	6	4	10
Alex Neil (First 20 games for Stoke)	20	6	5	9

Even when you consider he has not had a transfer window with which to work, you would expect at least some improvement from coaching alone, even if it was temporary.

When analysing Neil at Sunderland too, you start seeing quite a few converging factors that could have had a big influence on the improvement towards the end of the season. Neil is one of them, but he wasn’t the only one by any means.

After all, Neil didn’t have much of a new-manager bounce at Sunderland. He won just two of his first six games and drew three. That was only one point better than Lee Johnson’s final six games. It wasn’t until late February with the win at Wigan that things started to really motor.

It was around a month after January signings Patrick Roberts and Jack Clarke arrived at the club. Both of those had played little football and needed time to get up to speed physically, and Sunderland’s improvement coincided with them doing just that.

Then there is the Luke O’Nien factor too. It has never been more apparent just how important O’Nien is to the heart and soul of the Sunderland team. Sunderland played 11 games after he was restored to the team, lost none, and won seven of them.

Indeed, if you look at the Sunderland team impressing so much in the Championship this season, all but one player (Amad) was available to Alex Neil in League One as well. That really does highlight that the recruitment team provided Neil with a squad well above League One level.

There is, of course, the evidence of this season too. Neil walking out on Sunderland was certainly a shock and a big disappointment at the time. No one was happy about it. It’s not exactly affected anything though, has it?

Tony Mowbray does deserve some credit there, but essentially the club just seemed to sigh a collective ‘oh well’ when he left and carried on exactly the same without him. That doesn’t really scream that he was specifically essential to the cause.

The quality recruitment in January just days before Neil arrived, the total absence of impact at both Stoke and Sunderland of him switching clubs earlier this season and, I’d also suggest, the improvement in style of football on Wearside since he left, all add up to suggest Neil was not the driving force at Sunderland most of us thought he was.

I still believe wholeheartedly that Neil is a very good coach. Given enough time, I expect him to come good at Stoke, and if not there I'm sure he'll do very well somewhere else. Perhaps he is just the right man at the wrong time for Stoke.

But, on reflection, I have probably come to revise my previous view that Neil was in any way special for Sunderland. He was a good coach at a crucial time and did the club a huge service in helping haul it out of League One, but he was not the vital cog he often appeared to be.

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