Former Sunderland manager Peter Reid has revealed the boardroom battle which ultimately led to his sacking. Reid twice led the club to promotion to the Premier League and secured back-to-back seventh-placed finishes in 2000 and 2001 - the Black Cats' highest league placings since the mid-1950s - but after surviving a relegation scare in the 2001-02 season, he was dismissed nine games into the following season with the Wearsiders sitting fourth bottom. But Reid says the seeds of his sacking in October 2002 were planted years earlier when the club, then owned and chaired by Bob Murray, decided to spend £6m to build the North Stand extension, increasing the Stadium of Light capacity from 42,000 to 48,500, when the manager felt that money should have been invested in the team. "We were seventh at the time, and in a board meeting the chairman floated the idea to put another 6,000 seats in the Stadium of Light," Reid told beIN Sports' Keys & Gray Show. "In the board meeting, as manager I said that I didn't agree with that approach. I thought that how much that should have cost should have been spent on players. "It was a cost, maybe £6m to £10m, which back then I thought would have been better spent trying to get a better quality of player. "I had a good side, but to get from seventh upwards you need top international players. "The board decided to put the 6,000 seats in, and I had to get on with my job. "I could not get the quality of player in that I felt could move the club forward, so about nine games into a season and with us fourth from bottom the chairman decided to remove me from my post." Reid was keen to improve the squad to build on the seventh-place finishes but instead the North Stand extension was opened in 2000, and Sunderland's on-field fortunes began to go into decline. After Reid's sacking, Howard Wilkinson took charge and the Black Cats were relegated with a then-record low 19 points. And only once since Reid left has the club finished in the top half of the Premier League, back in 2009-10 under Steve Bruce. Reid said: "I thought the 42,000 was adequate for Sunderland. "The best thing about football is the team on the pitch - that's what wins trophies. "If you haven't got a quality side on the pitch then it's a struggle, and that should have been spent on quality players instead of the capacity of the stadium."
For all I love and appreciate Bob Murray... I'm with Peter Reid on this one. The extension was never needed at a time we all knew that a further cash injection was required to carry the team forward to the next level.
I also agree with Reid, I always thought the extension was unnecessary as I always knew that we would at some point decend into total ****e like we always do (as most clubs do in cycles) and a 49k stadium would be exactly as it is now. I laugh when the inevitable cyclic post arrives suggesting we should increase capacity even further in the future if we are ever successful. It would be the stupidest decision ever.
Not sure how anyone could argue against what Reid says. It was obvious to me that quality players were needed to push us on. Still think we'd have been mighty close to winning the league in the first 7th place season had the money been spent at Christmas.
Ridiculous as that sounds now, folk forget how close we were. Didn’t we draw away at Arsenal and go second? We needed legs at CB and we needed a CM. I can’t help but tho I if we’d got Hutch that tiny bit earlier, we could have done something wild. Probably not ‘win the league’ wild mind
please log in to view this image He put our full squad together that achieved 7th twice in a row. He brought some great players in. He knew a quality midfielder when he seen one.
We were on such a roll, a couple of quality solid signings would have give us a pretty comfortable top 4 spot with momentum, that season. I'm fairly confident on that one. I remember everybody seemed to know we were missing the right time to spend a bit of money and improve. Whatever we spent we'd have got back in champions league revenue the following season. Golden opportunity and we just allowed it to sail by.
I believe he could be a right stubborn awkward bastard when he wanted to which made him go down in my estimation.
He was only human I think I can overlook him being a bit stubborn considering he has give me my best ever times supporting the lads.
Not mistakes.. He knew exactly what he was doing when he was paying massively over the odds for absolute ****e and all through the same agent. This is what Reid done when he was given decent money to spend. People seem to forget this.
He was our manager for 6 or 7 years, of course he made mistakes. He made some bad signings. Medina, Laslandes, Nunez. At the end he blew 10 million on Flo and Stewart. At the time, though, the money was way to late in coming, we'd lost momentum and we were on a downward spiral. More or less panic signings that didn't work out. He should have been backed at the correct time and we'd have likely seen champions league football under him. The majority of his signings were spot-on. We played brilliant football under him absolutely thrashing opponents, at times. The stadium was rocking, SNQ and SKP, 7th place finishes. He was a great manager and legend, in my eyes. I'm still not sure about the mistakes he made which must be important enough to bring up?
Schwarz - 5.4m. Quality signing. Reyna - 6.7m. Quality singing. Kilbane - 3.4m. Good signing. Nunez - 2.4m. Shocking signing. Thome - 6.7m. Great signing. Arca - 4.7m. Great signing. Hutch - 3.75m. Great signing. Hass - 11.8m. Terrible signing. Laslandes - 6m. Terrible signing. Medina - 5.25m. Terrible signing. That looks normal, to me. More of his signings came off than not and that's all you can ask really.
I'm talking about his last two years or so at the club when he only ever used the one agent. Reid was excellent until he got greedy. I spoke to an ex player at a talk in and he said that a lot of the players though Reid and this agent fleeced our club.
I agree that there were some very good signings, but there were some absolute shocking signings. All about opinions but I am not sure that Reid could handle top quality players who had the temerity to question his tactics. The signings towards the end of his reign were somewhat strange in a number of cases. You mentioned one in Milton Nunez, I suppose we all have a shelf life and Reid was past his sell by date, in my opinion of course
