Sunderland AFC - Breaking the Curse

So to truly understand my undying love for Sunderland you need to understand the rocky start our relationship had.

When I started getting into football there wasn’t a Sunderland presence in Northern Ireland. Most football fans supported Liverpool or Manchester United. The rest were split between Celtic and Rangers due to cultural backgrounds but that’s for another time.

The only time I ever heard about Sunderland was from my own living room on a Saturday morning. When my dad would religiously watch for the Sunderland results regardless of good bad or ugly.

My first ever memory of a Sunderland match was not a great one. The first division play off final in 1998 Sunderland and Charlton had just played out an absolute footballing classic resulting in a 4-4 draw.

The match had went to penalties and was at deadlock at 6 penalties scored each. Then up steps Michael Gray one of the best left backs and players to ever play for Sunderland to take the penalty. My dads on the edge of his seat, certain Gray will score. He misses. The tv remote bounced off the wall and there was no football in the house for the rest of that year.

So we didn’t get off to the best of starts but that didn’t put me off, seing Quinn and Phillips together was a joy to behold. As I was growing up Sunderland were doing well and had consecutive finishes at 7th in the league but Sunderland being Sunderland bought poorly and couldn’t capitalise on that early 2000 success.

Then as I hit my teens I started to get a taste for football and watching on a screen wasn’t good enough anymore. With a birthday in July my big wish was to get to go to a match. The following season and with Sunderland being recently promoted things looked good.

October 29th 2006 I fly over to Newcastle airport, filled with glee and a sense of optimism. Hoping that I’ll be able to watch my struggling heroes pull a result out of the bag. Just for me because I’ve saved all of my birthday money to come and watch them this once. That wasn’t the story unfortunately. Portsmouth who were a decent side back then, hammered us 4-1 with Matty Taylor scoring an absolute worldie from 40 yards out.

Home I went disappointed but somehow even more infatuated with the black cats, the atmosphere of the stadium, the noise of the crowd. The taste of a steak pie at half time, everything drew me in.

With Christmas around the corner my next big wish was to go to a derby match. Yet again I was young and naive. Not realising we were a really poor side this year I thought again we could win this one just for me. Yet again we got beat. And yea again it was 4-1.

But this time more than ever my love grew ten fold. The atmosphere at a derby match is unlike anything you’ve ever seen in your life. Before the match your treated like family by everyone around you. The songs the fans sing before kick off are like those tribes sing the eve before a war. Everyone is chomping at the bit. Then comes the music. Dance of the Knights. Every time I hear that song I get tingles up my spine. The stadium erupts with a battle cry that would make the hardest of soldiers stop in his tracks. The fans are carrying the players through the game making them seemingly play better because of their support.

The players showed real passion and you could tell wanted to better on that day. But ultimately we fell short and three goals in 6 minutes consigned us too defeat.

Yet again on the way home I hummed dance of the Knights for 24 hours straight. In the shower I sang the songs about Dyer and Shearer. On the football pitch I imagined myself scoring the winner in a derby. I was infatuated.

I’ve been over to watch the lads a few more times since then and to be honest the last 4 times have been the best. My old man hadn’t been able to get over as often as he’d liked over the years so once I was earning enough I got us two tickets and flights for a derby match. That was the start of the best run in derbies we’ve ever had but that’s for another article. We haven’t seen Sunderland beaten in the last five matches we’ve been too so the first few matches of torment have been evened out you could say.

That is why i truly madly deeply love Sunderland. Now that is an extract from a piece that i wrote for a Sunderland fan site and i think it was the perfect introduction and insight to why i haven't chosen to manage Sunderland but more of why i feel compelled to manage them.

Next update will include tactics and transfer targets!!

Even though this is a Sunderland career (boo ) you have produced an excellent OP @arca-33 and welcome back to our career section.

Well well well look who it is! Good to see you back @arca-33 hopefully with a long term effort this year

Good luck, you're gonna need it!

Looking forward to this. I definitely think they've suffered with previous managers so I'm hoping you can build some long term success.

I still remember playing Sunderland in the FA Cup 3rd Round with Northwich Victoria, we lost 3-1 but we loved the day out at the Stadium of Light!

So with one of the biggest failures in recent years being transfers and buying poorly i was determined to make sure that this did not happen under my reign once more. Now this is where things for me have been really really really challenging this year. Each player who i had a bid accepted for demanded a bumper pay rise as well as being allowed to use the club as a stepping stone. I didnt want to sell my club short by allowing players to use us as a stepping stone to bigger clubs but at this point i cant argue with them. Realistically whos looking forward to mid table safety each year with the odd drama of a relegation battle. So i gave in and agreed however thats not all these mercenaries wanted. Each player wanted close to 100K per week, regardless of their clubs stature or their own ability they wanted a bumper pay increase and some of that new premier league money. With us not being able to attract or afford the higher level of player i tried to sign some younger players from clubs around Europe but with no promise of European football and not giving into their extortionate wage demands they werent really willing to join us just yet.

So with that being said we had to move on and change our transfer stratergy. We decided to raid two of the recently promoted teams best players. Lets have a look at two of those in a bit more detail.


Andre Gray

Having scored 24 Goals last season for Burnley he started having his named mentioned as one of the futures of English football, Pacey, strong, good in the air and great in front of goal however an ill fated spell on social media during his younger days has stalled his premier league career having recieved a lengthy ban. However with sunderland only having two recognised strikers at the club, sunderland needed another younger more agile striker. Defoe will be a great tutor for Gray and will allow him to learn and grow over the next few seasons and Anichebe will give us another option up front a big target man.

Andrew Robertson

Now i appreciate that left back may not be the biggest problem area within Sunderland but to me it is one of the most vital positions within the team. I appreciate that we may need better centre backs or to even strengthen our midfield but at the minute PVA is more of a left winger playing left back than an actual left back. With Robertson coming in he gives us a bit more defensive stability aswell as real quality from wide areas. Also this gives us a bit more flexibility in terms of moving PVA further up the pitch, i really think he can give us some real quality and pace on the left wing.

Other Transfers In
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We then also brought in a few youngsters to help improve our existing younger players. Symon Walczak was brought in on a free transfer and will immedietley go into the youth side to improve on what we have, we then brought in Nemanja Mihajlovic from Partizan Belgrade who can hopefully be this years Zivkovic, however he was unable to obtain a work permit but we can do without him for a few months and i will try to get him moved out on loan. We also then signed Rade Krunic on loan from Empoli, he was a young lad and is certainly worth having a better look at during the course of the season. We also then signed Luca antei for a cut price of 1.5 Million, having managed Sassuolo a few years ago i was suprised to see him on the transfer list, hes still very young at 24 and offers us extra competition for places

Outgoings -

We immediately let Mcnair and Djilobodji leave the club. Now i know on football manager there probably very decent players with McNair looking like he could be particularly good this year and Djilobodji looking decent as a starting centre back but their real life performances this year have meant that i did not have any patience or time for them and needed rid of them immedieatly. Djilibodjis transfer is one that completely baffles me, he was signed for for 3 milion by Chelsea, never played game for them then was sold to Sunderland for 8 Million. I dont understand how that can happen ever. His performances have been terrible this year so hes gone. McNair is a victim of circumstance. Its not his fault that Moyes signed him instead of Mvila in the summer or that Moyes seems him as a midfielder or attacking midfielder when he was an defender at united but he just hasnt cut it for me in real life so again he is gone.

Formation Talk

We dont really have many out and out wingers or much pace out wide with Januzaj and Khazri our two best wingers not having much explosive power or pace, both men are great on the ball and to me look like they would be better in a central formation, as would Lynden Gooch who has been a real starlet this season for Sunderland. So weve went for quite an attacking formation with 3 attacking midfielders behind our loan striker. I dont believe were strong enough in defence to hold off teams and get 1-0 results i just dont think were capabale of it. Our best players are all in attacking areas so ive decided to lean heavily into that and adapt an attacking formation to try and simply outscore the oppostion. As a sunderland fan weve had too many years of boring football without any excitment. So ive decided to turn things up a bit and get us scoring again hopefully. Which can be seen in our first two results below.

So with us reaching October its about time i did another update before i get too far ahead of myself. So lets be honest its been an absolutely fantastic start too the season and i mean fantastic. Our formation has achieved what we wanted which was a lot of goals and our defence has done what we predicted, conceded a lot of goals.

So these are the results so far this season, so ill deal with the dissapointing results first of all. We got absolutely hammered by Arsenal 4-1 and with football manager sticking true too form Lucas Perez a player who hasnt featured this season in real life tore us apart and beat us 4-1 now ill take the blame for that. Ive adopted a new formation for away games with the big teams but we went in with our goals galore formation and got punished for it. The other and more dissapointing result was the defeat to Sheffield United in the EFL Cup. Now i took the opportunity to change things and give some reserve players a chance to impress and well they didnt. I found out a lot about my squad in the match but missed out the bigger opportunity to win a trophy in my first season. We then got some great results against Man United and Chelsea, with United we used our formation for the first time and it worked a treat, United werent prepared for our defensive stability and the numbers we had in midfield. They couldnt cut us down and we capitalised and Kone scored from a corner. With Chelsea we were winning 3-0 thanks to Andre Grey capitalising on some Ivanovic errors we got three vital goals and were able to hold of a late surge from Chelsea to secure the win


Below is the away formation ive adopted for the bigger games. Like every football manager or football fan ive been really excited too see 3-4-3 work in real life and ive decided that now is the time to try and make it work with Sunderland, its very defensive focused and is built for trying to snatch a draw or a win.


Our results against the big teams aswell as our ability to get wins against the teams around our level has meant that weve enjoyed some really early success in the league, if we can finish were we are now id be delighted at the end of the season, id really like to have a run in the europa league for a few years before the champions league. I know that sounds a bit silly but i want to have a few seasons to build and grow and get used to playing in europe and the league before we take a crack at the big boys.

What a difference a month makes!!! So after seven games we were in shooting distance of a place in Europe, fast forward too January and we have had an absolutely disastrous run of form. I dont know if the all out attack tactic will continue to work and will get us where we need to be. I dont want us too end up like a Blackpool were we play expansive attacking football but dont really achieve anything.

We went 8 matches without a win that had us dropping down the table but also had me worrying for my job. A devestating 5-2 Loss to Burnley reall woke me up and it was time for a change, we went all out attack thinking we could blow them out of the water but they completely trumped us and got us on a quick counter and especially Defour he showed a real touch of class again.



The run of losses seen us drop down the table however 3 wins in 4 matches meant we climbed back up slightly and now sit smack bang in the middle of the table at 10th in the league!! We are still only 4 points behind the 5th place and we are level on points with Man City which if we could do that every year it would be a great!!

For this first season i would be happy consolidating our place in the league and building, this isnt going too be a quick save and win a title in the first season and to be honest id prefer if i coud make it as realistic as possible, take our team climb the league, buy good players and develop our youth system!!!

The next update will be the January Transfer window with what little money we have left and any matches in January will be covered aswell.

Like any football manager addict ive seemingly rushed through my first season and let my story fall to the side so what ive decided to do is just post the end of season results then start a fresh next season do more in depth and often results.

Results



League Finish



Budget For Next Season

Good first season in charge. Certainly broken the usual Sunderland tag for now, hopefully you can continue!

The Transfer Revolution

So this has been the busiest transfer window any one team in the premier league has ever seen, with 12 people in and 8 people leaving. We didnt start the transfer window with any particular plan of action however a few weeks in i decided that we would concentrate on looking for young English talent, for a few reasons if im honest:
1. Foreign talent either did not want to discuss joining our club because we didn't have a big enough reputation or if they did enter negotiations they wanted a major pay-rise with the majority wanting over 100k
2. Younger English players realised that a chance to play in the premier league could not be missed and were willing to join for lower wages.
3. The Mentality of English clubs at the minute needs to be changed, they're now buying average foreign players rather than giving younger players a chance, so if i can give younger english players a chance it'll put the club in good stead moving forward specifically in terms of European competition.

With that being said ill cover some in depth information on the 2 best signings i believe that weve made and will post a screen shot of all transfers underneath.

1. Ross Barkley
Having signed for a potential 25 Million this transfer would have caught the eye of many around the league. On the back of a below average camapaign with Everton where he got 4 goals and 4 assists he was deemed surplus to requirments from the Everton boss. For years Barkley has been the great white hope of English football, with stark comparissons to the likes of Gascoine and Rooney, barkley had a lot too live up to. Hes game has seemed to have stalled in recent years, his physical attributes have grew however his technical and critical thinking hasnt. Too often youll see analysis of him during games showing he holds on too long and often makes the wrong choice in the final third. I will try and move his career on too the next level.


2.Saido Berahino
Signed on a free transfer with a compensation fee of 3 million is an absolute bargain for a striker once valued at 25 million by his own club. Having had somewhat of a civil war with the West Brom top brass, Berahino has been another English starlet whos seen his career sort of just stall. Still showing bags of potential and ability his attitutde seems to be the thing that needs fixing. If i can give him regular playing time and an arm round the shoulder he will flourish.




All Transfers: