Sunderland: A needless tale of eroded trust, betrayal and self-sabotage

Things have gone very wrong at Sunderland, probably more wrong than the club even realise. But how on earth has it come to this?

It’s often been said that no club in football shoots themselves in the foot like Sunderland. It’s not without reason either.

Generally speaking that has always made it hard to relax as a supporter, and even harder to trust. In the darker days, just when you thought things could only get better, they suddenly got worse. In the good times, you’re just waiting for the self-destruction button to be pressed.

There was probably some genuine hope that things might be changing under the club’s current owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and sporting director Kristjaan Speakman.

In fact, just six weeks ago, Sunderland were in the top six of the Championship, with a very talented young team playing exciting must-watch football as one of the hottest young coaching talents in Europe was being chased. Things looked bright. The fanbase was buzzing with hope, enthusiasm and excitement.

We should have known really.

Since then we have seen one of the greatest acts of self-sabotage imaginable. It wasn’t so much the self-destruct button being pressed, but more relentlessly and repeatedly bashed with ferocious frenzy like you would the ‘fire’ button on an old Space Invaders arcade machine.

So, what have the club done to erode the trust and hopes of the fans so quickly and how on earth did we get here?

Beale betrayal

In many ways, I find the Michael Beale thing hard to talk about because it goes against every instinct I usually have as a Sunderland fan.

I am always an advocate of positivity and patience when it comes to Sunderland. Anyone who has followed me on social media for any length of time will be able to vouch for that.

IMAGO / Focus Images

So, to be so vocal in advocating for a manager (head coach, whatever) to be sacked so vociferously after just seven games feels counter-intuitive to me, and yet here we are.

This isn’t about never wanting him either. I mean, I didn’t want him, but the same can probably be said of 90% of the managers (head coaches, whatever) that have been appointed in my four decades as a Sunderland fan.

This is about feeling like the club have needlessly taken something deeply precious from me.

Because, let’s be clear, Sunderland fans are not an overly expectant bunch of people. It’s an accusation that is occasionally levelled at the supporters from those who don’t know the club, but it’s nonsense.

Sunderland fans don’t expect to win things. That’s axiomatic. You don’t have 40,000 fans and sold-out away ends turning up every week given the club’s recent history if wins are what you’re expecting to see.

Sunderland fans only ever expect two things: To feel connected to their club and to enjoy supporting their club. That’s it. That’s the list.

And that’s what Sunderland were delivering too. That’s the most maddening thing with the whole Beale appointment.

IMAGO / Focus Images

Yes, there was frustration at times under Tony Mowbray, but the important things were there. There was a team we enjoyed watching and felt incredibly connected to.

After everything we have been through as a fanbase, those things are precious and those things matter, maybe more than ever. And we had them, and the club took them from us and threw them away.

Now we have a head coach who don’t trust, who speaks to us in a patronizing manner about OUR club, and a team playing joyless, lifeless, soulless football when we KNOW they are capable of so much more.

That raises serious questions about whether they know what this club needs, how to engage these fans and, if they do, if they even value it.

Derby debacle

Mistakes are one thing. We all make them and we all forgive them. However, for the decisions that Sunderland made ahead of the FA Cup game against Newcastle, the word ‘mistake’ is wholly inadequate.

It’s no exaggeration to say that if you awoke from a coma, asked what you’d missed and were told that Sunderland had allowed 6,000 Newcastle fans into their ground, moved some of the loyalist season card holders in the club’s history to accommodate them, handed them the home end, gave them a Black Cats Bar and rebranded it to such an extent that it created a Newcastle United themed bar within the Stadium of Light itself… it wouldn’t even cross your mind that someone wasn’t trying to wind you up.

When photos leaked it caused a national embarrassment for the club and made them such a laughingstock that fans had no comeback at all to the taunts of the football world – and their bitterest rivals.

Now, the problem here is a similar one to that of the Beale appointment and it is a serious one: Do those running Sunderland actually understand it.

Because, let’s be brutally honest here, those are not mistakes that anyone at Sunderland should ever be making. Sunderland should never be rolling out the red carpet for Newcastle United. Surrendering such a huge area of the Stadium of Light, where Sunderland supporters have their names carved into the brickwork and where ashes of loved-ones are scattered, to Newcastle supporters should be the most obvious ‘no’ request the club could receive.

Any yet, someone with significant authority did, and how on earth are fans supposed to trust that person, of those people, ever again if they can’t even get that right?

Transfer troubles

It’s very easy to turn this into a moan about the model, but that’s not what this is. The model at Sunderland will always cause debate among supporters.

Even if it works and gets the club into a Brighton-style position, fans will want it jettisoned in order to take the next step instead. Debate and disagreement, then, is just par for the course now. Although, in all honesty, I think that would be the case for whatever the club do around transfers. It has, at least, always been the case in my lifetime.

It’s true that you can look at the overall quality Sunderland now have compared to when the current owners took over and rightly credit them for some very good work.

There is no doubting that Jack Clarke is a huge upgrade on Chris Maguire, that Dan Ballard is worlds away from Tom Flanagan, that Dennis Cirkin is on another planet to Callum McFadzean, that Trai Hume is a different animal completely to Conor McLaughlin.

The problem is that it is now a year since the Sunderland recruitment team landed a slam dunk. Of last January’s permanent editions, only Pierre Ekwah has made any kind of impact at all, and he is a work in progress.

IMAGO / Ross Johnston

The exact same can be said of the summer window too, with Jobe being an addition who has done very well but also shown a lot of inconsistency. Ekwah and Jobe are the best of the bunch in the last year, and both are a couple of years away from being reliable.

In the same time period, fans have seen the likes of Ross Stewart (with obvious injury caveats), Lynden Gooch and Danny Batth leave, with Alex Pritchard almost certain to follow them.

Now, we might look back at the summer transfer window in a couple of years time and think it was brilliant. Luis Hemir, Eliezer Mayenda, Nazariy Rusyn, Nectarios Triantis, Timothee Pembele, Adil Aouchiche and Jenson Seelt may mature into outstanding footballers for the club.

The problem is that it looks like they have forgotten about the hear and now.

That’s not the players’ fault. Every single one of last summer’s additions with the exception of Bradley Dack are eligible for the under-21s. That’s where more of them have primarily landed too.

This month has been no better. With a week to go of the window, the club are not really close to a breakthrough in the transfer market, or a breakout in terms of transfer policy.

The fact 31-year-old Kieffer Moore is the primary striker target is encouraging, and in fairness it is Bournemouth holding things up there, not Sunderland, but that doesn’t help with the perception – especially with confidence low that the club can achieve anything remotely progressive right now.

It has also been a full three years since Sunderland bought a striker ready for the here and now. That striker was Ross Stewart, of course, and if you want some context on how long ago that was then look no further than the fact that in the intervening time, Stewart has had the time to settle, have a brilliant season, win two matches at Wembley, get a serious injury, recover from it, move to another club and get another serious injury.

There are mitigating circumstances to a certain extent. Strikers are hard to get, and the better your team becomes the harder it is to improve it. However, those mitigating circumstances only go so far. It buys patience, but not a pass.

That patience has probably ran out now and trust reserves being consumed instead – and they are getting serious low as well now.

‘Customer’ contempt

Football fans are not customers, no matter how much clubs nowadays think they are. Sunderland are one of them.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Sunderland fans aren’t even respected ‘customers.’

The derby debacle said as much, but that wasn’t alone by any stretch of the imagination. In fact it was just the latest off-field problem at the club.

Fans have struggled to contact the ticket office, or go to it at all, and buy the club’s own strip from the club’s own shops.

The rollout of the digital season cards was handled poorly with patchy communication as well, especially for older fans who struggle with technology.

Fans have also had problems with Ticketmaster as well when buying tickets for individual games, and there have been occasional issues with the technology at the turnstiles too.

All in all, if we must accept we are ‘customers,’ at least treat us like valued ones. 

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