Dick Advocaat’s approach has lifted the mood after three narrow escapes from relegation, but Sunderland need to break the cycle of underachievement
Guardian writers’ predicted position: 15th (NB: this is not necessarily Louise Taylor’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)
Last season’s position: 16th
Odds to win the league (via Oddschecker): 3,000-1
It is still only August but with Sunderland top of the league and their centre-forward unable to stop scoring, title talk swirls in the Wearside air. Admittedly Arsenal look serious challengers, but surely Beth Mead’s goals will be enough to see them off?
If the horizon looks glorious for the current stars of the English Women’s Super League, their brother team harbour rather more modest ambitions. After a trio of astonishing escapes from relegation, Sunderland’s men are extremely fortunate to still be part of the Premier League. Small wonder there are whispers that, in terms of dedication, discipline and sheer professionalism, they could learn a few things from Carlton Fairweather’s high-flying side.
Had Dick Advocaat not been drafted in to replace Gus Poyet for the final nine games of last season the Stadium of Light would almost certainly be a Championship venue now, and the summer’s best news on Wearside centred on the Dutchman’s decision to accept Sunderland’s offer of a one-year contract and resist the pleasures of retirement for a little longer.
Able to disguise his ego and with a helpful habit of making decisions in the best interests of the club, the 67-year-old former Holland coach has brought a calm authority to the job. After the self-obsession and volatility of both Poyet and Paolo di Canio, this much more measured, reassuring approach has come as a welcome relief to players and club officials.
Advocaat’s challenge now is to re-model a team woefully short of invention, attacking incision, pace, power, height and, arguably most alarming of all, sustained industry.
This Sunderland side have a habit of turning it on when it suits them – a team frequently so poor that at times last season they seemed incapable of collecting another point, but they have beaten Newcastle United five times in a row. Similarly, the last three seasons have seen near miraculous 11th-hour escapes from relegation. It is almost as if certain players wait until it is almost too late for salvation – or Newcastle occupy the adjacent locker room – before rousing themselves into action.
This perhaps explains why some Sunderland supporters viewed newspaper pictures of Steven Fletcher’s summer stag do in Dubai in a harsh light. Featuring poolside shisha pipes, bottled beers and assorted football friends and team-mates both past and present, including Titus Bramble and Everton’s Ross Barkley, they were ostensibly harmless but played straight into fans’ nagging suspicions regarding the presence of a hedonistic culture in certain dressing room quarters.
A cloud also hangs over the club in the shape of Adam Johnson’s crown court trial in February, when the winger faces charges of sexual activity with a 15-year-old girl and grooming. Johnson has played well in pre-season and seems set to start the campaign in a first XI partly re-stocked by Advocaat and Lee Congerton, Sunderland’s sporting director.
The problem of a slow, ageing central defence has been addressed with the acquisition of Younès Kaboul from Tottenham Hotspur and Sebastián Coates from Liverpool. Adam Matthews has also arrived from Celtic on a mission to challenge Billy Jones for the right-back berth.
Further forward, Jeremain Lenspromises long-craved creativity – and goals – from midfield after joining from Dynamo Kyiv in an £8.5m deal. If completed, imminent moves for Rubin Kazan’s defensive midfield enforcer Yann M’Vila and QPR’s Leroy Fer should also add much-needed physical presence to the engine room.
The arrival of M’Vila may also enable Lee Cattermole to adopt a slightly more attacking midfield role, and arguably the best piece of business Congerton has done this summer is getting the midfielder to agree to a contract extension. There is a reason Advocaat calls a player worthy of an England cap (on the basis he can cut out those silly bookings) “our controller”.
It would also be good to see Emanuele Giaccherini offered a decent run in the first team. The Italy midfielder has mainly been injured or overlooked since his arrival from Juventus two seasons ago but he possesses the sort of vision lacking elsewhere in the squad. Jermain Defoe, for one, would enjoy his service.
Then there is Duncan Watmore. Advocaat has tended to be conservative about blooding youngsters, but the highly regarded England Under-20 forward deserves a first-team chance. Were Watmore to graduate to the senior ranks, he would be the first product of Sunderland’s academy to do so since Jordan Henderson, now at Liverpool, and Jack Colback, now at Newcastle, made the leap more than half a decade ago.
This failure to establish a pathway between the Academy of Light and the first team represents a significant disconnect and it is part of Congerton’s remit to make the repair. Overall the sporting director has taken on quite some challenge, having inherited a squad replete with awful, misfit signings made in scattergun fashion by his predecessor, Roberto De Fanti. Congerton could certainly do with recruiting more players in the mould of the impressive left-back Patrick van Aanholt, an astute £1.5m buy from Chelsea last summer.
With Poyet’s buys (Liam Bridcutt and Will Buckley anyone?) in need of offloading, much work remains to be done behind the scenes, and with Advocaat only back on a short-term basis, this will also involve identifying a long-term managerial successor.
Whoever ends up in the hot seat next summer – unless Advocaat agrees another extension, of course – will take charge of one of England’s best-supported clubs. Despite numerous moribund performances, crowds at the 49,000-capacity Stadium of Light averaged around 43,000 last season. It is an awful long time since Sunderland were known as “the team of all the talents” and, later, “the Bank of England club”, so such extraordinary support showed tremendous loyalty. It now deserves a little repayment.
Those fans hope Jack Rodwell – a £10m disappointment last season following his much-vaunted move from Manchester City – will start fulfilling his long trumpeted midfield potential, but their biggest current concern is in attack.
Connor Wickham’s transfer to Crystal Palace represents a failure on the part of a striker all too often appearing in need of a kick up the backside to maximise his undeniable talent, but it also reflects Sunderland’s failure to develop him properly.
Signed for £8m from Ipswich as a 17-year-old, Wickham variously failed to find any sort of consistency under Steve Bruce, Martin O’Neill, Di Canio, Poyet (bar one relegation-averting scoring patch in the spring of 2014) or Advocaat. Does the fault lie with a player in whom Alan Pardew has just invested £6m, or was it simply another case of systemic failure at the Stadium of Light?
Whatever the true story regarding Wickham, Sunderland now crave a reliable striker to operate alongside Defoe and Fletcher – not to mention rival Beth Mead in the scoring charts. Advocaat’s men may not be destined to finish quite as far up the table as Fairweather’s women, but the Dutchman’s continued presence should at least ensure their long-suffering supporters finally have something to cheer about.
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