Of the Guardian... Seems a canny journo, and writes some good pieces.... Her latest edition...... It was early December, gale force winds meant that car doors needed to be opened with extreme care and Martin O'Neill wore his new club coat for the first time. The venue was Eppleton Colliery Welfare football club in deepest County Durham and Sunderland reserves were thrashing Manchester United 6-3. Frissons of excitement greeted the arrival of O'Neill, who had succeeded Steve Bruce as Sunderland's manager and the talk centred on whether Ryan Noble would be hot-housed into the first team. A young striker hitting top form following back and knee injuries, Noble scored four goals but the eyes of O'Neill were drawn to another player, a left wing named James McClean. "I didn't know anything about James," O'Neill said. "But, all of a sudden, this hungry kid was busting a gut in 70mph winds. He had courage, was physically very strong and the first time he got the ball he took his man on." Three days later McClean â pronounced McClane â made his senior debut, stepping off the bench to turn things Sunderland's way as O'Neill's first game saw his new team come from behind to beat Blackburn. Since then the £350,000 signing from Derry City has established himself as an automatic first choice, scoring four goals. He is likely to feature prominently in Arsène Wenger's FA Cup team-talk on Wearside on Saturday. A hallmark of O'Neill's managerial career has been his habit of fast-tracking bright youngsters, with Emile Heskey at Leicester and Aston Villa's Gabriel Agbonlahor notable examples. "It gives all the young players at a club a boost," said Sunderland's manager. "I've fast-tracked some useless ones in my time but James certainly doesn't fall into that category." Instead a winger who turns 23 in April is not only arguably the Premier League's discovery of the season, but he also offers hope to late developers everywhere. Football's equivalent of the dust-shrouded Old Master hidden away in an attic, McClean's League of Ireland displays for Derry City had gone largely unnoticed, with only Lincoln and Peterborough pursuing him. Everything changed when the left-footed player described by Stephen Kenny, his manager at Derry, as someone "never happy to be just OK, who always wanted to be the best", shone against Manchester City for a League of Ireland XI in a pre-season tournament in Dublin last July. Suitably impressed, Bruce "took a risk" on "one for the future". Perversely Bruce spent subsequent months lamenting his lack of a "proper" left wing and complaining that if he had only been allowed to sign Charles N'Zogbia results would have been infinitely better. Despite taking quite a shine to the young Irishman's personality, Bruce consistently resisted throwing him into the deep end. "We can't expect James to walk into the Premier League and be an instant success," he said. Variously described as "modest", "sensible" and "quiet", McClean does not lack strong, sometimes controversial opinions. Brought up in a nationalist, Celtic-supporting family in the Creggan area of Derry, he represented Northern Ireland at Under-21 level but exercised his right, enshrined in the Good Friday agreement, to switch allegiance to the Republic. "I'm following my heart," he said. "My reasons are only football reasons â there's no politics involved." Nonetheless a man who accepts his hopes of making Ireland's Euro 2012 squad are, perhaps surprisingly, remote, now describes his Under-21 sojourn as a "defection" and recently rebuked the BBC's Colin Murray over the vexed issue of Irishness. When Murray, who is from Belfast, commented that it was good to see a Northern Irishman scoring Sunderland's winner against Stoke, McClean's riposte, via Twitter, was unequivocal: "Colin Murray get it right will you, it's Irish." O'Neill, the first Catholic to captain Northern Ireland, knows the north's loss represents a significant southern gain. "At some point his form will dip but the level of consistency James has shown is truly amazing," he said. "He's been exceptional." If McClean's penchant for accelerating to the byline before whipping in crosses â ideally having beaten his full-back on the outside â make him seem something of a throwback, he comes equipped with 21st century accessories. Strong, quick, apparently fearless and, at 5ft 11in, reasonably tall, McClean possesses the sort of athlete's physique that explains why he â rather than the prolific yet less physically developed Noble â got a foot in the first-team door. It also means his game is not entirely reliant on wingers' tricks. He should shortly be rewarded with a contract which could quadruple his £4,000 a week wages. It will reflect a capacity to learn fast. Quite apart from swiftly buying into an assiduous work ethic big on tracking back, McClean has developed the knack of crossing without necessarily beating a defender while also adding variety by cutting in on the inside or embarking on surging diagonal runs. If he can occasionally rampage around the pitch a little wildly, his thrilling directness threatens to haunt Wenger's nightmares.
Excellent piece. Thanks for posting. I always enjoy reading Louise's articles. She seems to have captured James personality as a person and a player and conveyed exactly why MON (a football expert) and the fans (who think they are football experts!) rate him so highly.
Another one from Margaret Byrne...........if anyone is interested...... Things have changed at Sunderland. Study the Barclays Premier League table and the miracle being wrought by Martin O’Neill offers an obvious freshness, but a new face in the dugout and a reawakening by players are not the only differences. Enter the boardroom and you will meet Margaret Byrne, the club’s chief executive who, at the age of 31, already sits on the FA Council. So much about football has felt regressive recently, but an alternative narrative flows from the Stadium of Light, where more than half of Sunderland’s executive management team are women. They do not crow about it, but it undermines a few stereotypes about the game and about the North East. Byrne is Sunderland’s figurehead. With a background in criminal law — “nothing fazes you when you’ve represented somebody charged with attempted murder,” she said — in her previous role as company secretary she reorganised the club’s legal department, working on contracts and pre-season preparations. She stepped into her present position last summer and is now in daily charge, liaising between O’Neill and Ellis Short, the owner. While Niall Quinn — whose “magic carpet ride” at Sunderland began in 2006, when he returned to the club as chairman — remains involved, overseeing international development, Byrne does the decisions. She describes her five years on Wearside as “a dream” and they have been a whirlwind, too, but the arrival of O’Neill as manager has dared supporters to dream again. There was some anguish getting there. “The hardest thing was when we had to part company with Steve Bruce,” Byrne said. “Steve is a real gentleman, I’ve got so much time for him. When you work so closely with somebody you see a different side to them and that was really difficult. Everyone at the club was emotional. “At the same time, it was the right decision and I’m really enjoying working with Martin. This is the fourth manager I’ve done deals with and they all handle them slightly differently. We must have had every striker under the sun recommended to us in January and going through them with Martin was brilliant.” In the end, O’Neill tinkered with his squad rather than overhauling it — Bruce signed a whole team of players last summer — but a strategy is in place for what follows. “Martin has already looked at players for the summer,” Byrne said. “I’ve been talking about it with Ellis — we’re at the stage where we know certain positions need filling and what we might do.” O’Neill’s drive has electrified everybody. “We want to be playing in Europe,” Byrne said. “That was one of Martin’s comments when he was first appointed. It was a meal with the board one night and it was brilliant, really passionate — ‘I want a night of European football at Sunderland’, he said. “I got a lump in my throat. If we didn’t know it before, we knew it then — he’s right for us. It was exactly what you wanted to hear, but he meant it. And I believe it, too. I’m not a daydream believer, I know we’re not likely to be playing in the Champions League, but I know we’ve got a fair chance to be pushing for Europe.” This evening’s FA Cup fifth-round tie against Arsenal represents a short cut. Byrne has already forged a reputation as a canny negotiator. “It’s human nature, you love getting a bargain, a good deal,” she said. “At the same time, you have to have relationships. Football is a very small world and you want to be fair.” Being voted on to the FA Council by her peers in the Premier League suggests that she is treading that line with agility and dynamism. Her gender has rarely been an issue. “I’m sure there are some fairly entrenched attitudes around and one or two individuals have been quite patronising, but I’ve never felt any barriers,” she said. “Within the football world, I think I’m seen as professional, that I know my stuff, that I’ll always work to get the best deal for the club, but that I’m not unreasonable.” Her introduction to football was not preordained, but drawn to the Irish epic of Quinn and Roy Keane — she hails from County Armagh — Byrne answered a job advertisement in The Sunday Times. She now has the Sunderland itch. “The club is under my skin, big time,” Byrne said. “It just takes over. I love that North East passion where everything depends on the Saturday. That was the first change I noticed. When you’re in practice, you know your court date, you know what you’ve prepared, what your chances are of winning. In football, everything can change in 90 minutes.” Change is something that Sunderland are growing proficient at. Irish connection • Margaret Byrne grew up just outside Newry in County Armagh during the peak of the Troubles. She took a degree in consumer studies at university in Belfast before completing a conversion course to law in London. • She trained at Galbraith Branley in North London and after specialising in financial settlements, divorce cases and criminal law, Byrne moved to Goodman Ray. • In January 2007, she responded to a job advertisement for a new Sunderland club secretary in The Sunday Times. “There was just something about it,” she said. “At the time, the owners were Irish, Roy Keane had taken over as manager, Niall Quinn was chairman.” • She was appointed chief executive last summer and was voted on to the FA Council, where the major policies of the English game are determined, as a Premier League representative in November. • She is also a member of the Premier League Legal Advisory Board.
Damn good read that. This Byrne lass certainly seems to know her stuff. There's so much good in there. The future's bright.
That's another great read. How exciting is it to be a Sunderland supporter with these excellent people at the helm. You just know that they have the good of the club at heart, not themselves, and so we need never fear becoming a Leeds, Portsmouth or Rangers etc. Times are good.
Two great articles that tel you that the club is in good hands. It was really interesting to read that MON saw Noble bang in 4 but could see past that to notice the potential of McClean - that's what maes him a great manager!!
I thought that McLean was discovered by Pop Robson, and Bruce had nothing to go with signing him? Hence why he never played him when he was an out and out left winger which we desperately needed.
Louise taylor is a shocking journo. She supports Sunderland and it comes across in her articles by the way she portrays anything about Newcastle. This wouldn't be so bad in a local newspaper in Sunderland, but the fact she is nationalised should see her as impartial with her articles.
This. Her obvious spite of anything NUFC related would be funny if she didnt have such an important role in portraying NE football nationally. There is nothing wrong with supporting your team but keep petty biases out of what are supposed to be pieces of reasoned journalism.
