Interesting snippets in the Echo and Chronicle today. I've copied the quotes in the Chronicle below to save you giving them clicks! Sounds like a mess behind the scenes. Good luck Parky!
he feels the club still 'fights with itself constantly'
“I’m so critical of myself that I immediately started thinking about what I could have done better. First and foremost, it was about not delivering on what I wanted to do, which was return the club to the Championship. From day one, I said promotion is what I wanted, so I can’t set goals like that and then bristle at criticism.
“If people say I failed because of that, fine. But in terms of failing in my time at the club, I’d argue with that until I was blue in the face. Because they don’t see the stuff we had to deal with. That job is tough. Ask me for one word to describe it and I’d say ‘challenging’. It was brilliant, but it was challenging. It’s a brilliant club and a difficult club, as well. And I don’t think I’m the only Sunderland manager to have said that.
“Some people will say we changed the mentality and others will say, ‘yeah, in League One’. I lost one league game at the Stadium of Light. That’s pretty damn good. ‘Yeah, in League One’. I think a lot of the things we did were good, but you’ll get people who’ll call it ****. I understand the need for the club to get back up the leagues, but it’s just how to do it in the best way moving forward. Straight away? It might be, it might not be.
“How we measure success and failure in football is very black and white, but I loved managing the club. And I don’t regret taking the job for a second. Sunderland has a really strong identity in terms of this historic club with a really big fan-base and everything that goes with it, but does it fight with itself in understanding what it really is, where it is at the moment and where it needs to go? I think it does, yeah. It fights with itself constantly.”
“You could feel a difference from pre-season almost. League One went from being a novelty to being intolerable; that was the way somebody put it and it was a brilliant way of describing it. That’s a bizarre set of circumstances and it’s not healthy as a manager. The dynamics in that change are difficult.
“So it goes to that feeling of ‘need to win, need to win, need to win’. Do you always need to win? Yeah, of course, but it’s a different feeling. Just win. You might not read about yourself or search for it, but if there’s a noise around you, around everything, it’s pretty impossible not be aware of it. There was a feeling for a while around the place that wasn’t particularly positive. How do you get out of that fog?”
“The first conversation I had with Stewart, he showed me the squad and said ‘They’ll all be gone, it’ll be a clean slate’. Maybe they didn’t think they’d want to play in League One … but that first pre-season was anything but a complete rebuild. It was just bonkers.
“The structure of the club was never where I wanted it to be, although that’s not to say I’m right.
“Ultimately, there are a lot of people who have outlasted me. But it was a great experience in terms of what do you need above and below you to make it work. I think I showed very little in terms of not being happy; it was important I did that, because people looked to me to set the tone.”
Ross never wanted Josh Maja to leave
“That’s not why we ended up losing the play-off final, but it meant there were a lot of games at the end of the season and we weren’t great, which ultimately cost us.
“With Josh, it’s easy to say in hindsight, but I believe he would have scored the same amount of goals in the second half of the season, because why wouldn’t he? I never, ever wanted him to leave the club.”
On the stick he received at Bolton
“I got a bit of stick and that’s fine, it happens.
“After the game, we came out and beside the coach there were kids asking for autographs and pictures. I would never not do that; I’d had a tough afternoon and I could have put my head down and got on the bus, but I’m happy to talk to fans and I remember how I felt as a kid loving football. I’d never walk past anybody in that way.
“So while I’m having my picture taken with a nine-year-old kid, I’m getting a 50-year-man giving me abuse. He was shouting, ‘F*** off back to Scotland’. That’s not me criticising Sunderland fans, because I’m sure it happens at every club, but it’s not right, that. People seem to think it’s acceptable in football. No human being could enjoy that. Sometimes, you just get back on the bus, shake your head and think ‘Wow.’”
On his positive memories of Sunderland
“There were some amazing, brilliant moments. A lot of the time you were reminded, wow, what a big club this is.
“I’d like to think the people who worked with me would say I’ve got very little ego, so if I’d been a disaster, I would say I crashed and burned.
“Even this season, we went to Burnley and Sheffield United in the League Cup, two Premier League clubs, and won and even that was … ah, but it doesn’t really matter now. I never once took the job for granted. I left with my head held high. Maybe some people will say ‘**** off’ to that, but it’s genuinely how I feel.”
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/this-hurts-bothers-lot-jack-17126232
he feels the club still 'fights with itself constantly'
“I’m so critical of myself that I immediately started thinking about what I could have done better. First and foremost, it was about not delivering on what I wanted to do, which was return the club to the Championship. From day one, I said promotion is what I wanted, so I can’t set goals like that and then bristle at criticism.
“If people say I failed because of that, fine. But in terms of failing in my time at the club, I’d argue with that until I was blue in the face. Because they don’t see the stuff we had to deal with. That job is tough. Ask me for one word to describe it and I’d say ‘challenging’. It was brilliant, but it was challenging. It’s a brilliant club and a difficult club, as well. And I don’t think I’m the only Sunderland manager to have said that.
“Some people will say we changed the mentality and others will say, ‘yeah, in League One’. I lost one league game at the Stadium of Light. That’s pretty damn good. ‘Yeah, in League One’. I think a lot of the things we did were good, but you’ll get people who’ll call it ****. I understand the need for the club to get back up the leagues, but it’s just how to do it in the best way moving forward. Straight away? It might be, it might not be.
“How we measure success and failure in football is very black and white, but I loved managing the club. And I don’t regret taking the job for a second. Sunderland has a really strong identity in terms of this historic club with a really big fan-base and everything that goes with it, but does it fight with itself in understanding what it really is, where it is at the moment and where it needs to go? I think it does, yeah. It fights with itself constantly.”
“You could feel a difference from pre-season almost. League One went from being a novelty to being intolerable; that was the way somebody put it and it was a brilliant way of describing it. That’s a bizarre set of circumstances and it’s not healthy as a manager. The dynamics in that change are difficult.
“So it goes to that feeling of ‘need to win, need to win, need to win’. Do you always need to win? Yeah, of course, but it’s a different feeling. Just win. You might not read about yourself or search for it, but if there’s a noise around you, around everything, it’s pretty impossible not be aware of it. There was a feeling for a while around the place that wasn’t particularly positive. How do you get out of that fog?”
“The first conversation I had with Stewart, he showed me the squad and said ‘They’ll all be gone, it’ll be a clean slate’. Maybe they didn’t think they’d want to play in League One … but that first pre-season was anything but a complete rebuild. It was just bonkers.
“The structure of the club was never where I wanted it to be, although that’s not to say I’m right.
“Ultimately, there are a lot of people who have outlasted me. But it was a great experience in terms of what do you need above and below you to make it work. I think I showed very little in terms of not being happy; it was important I did that, because people looked to me to set the tone.”
Ross never wanted Josh Maja to leave
“That’s not why we ended up losing the play-off final, but it meant there were a lot of games at the end of the season and we weren’t great, which ultimately cost us.
“With Josh, it’s easy to say in hindsight, but I believe he would have scored the same amount of goals in the second half of the season, because why wouldn’t he? I never, ever wanted him to leave the club.”
On the stick he received at Bolton
“I got a bit of stick and that’s fine, it happens.
“After the game, we came out and beside the coach there were kids asking for autographs and pictures. I would never not do that; I’d had a tough afternoon and I could have put my head down and got on the bus, but I’m happy to talk to fans and I remember how I felt as a kid loving football. I’d never walk past anybody in that way.
“So while I’m having my picture taken with a nine-year-old kid, I’m getting a 50-year-man giving me abuse. He was shouting, ‘F*** off back to Scotland’. That’s not me criticising Sunderland fans, because I’m sure it happens at every club, but it’s not right, that. People seem to think it’s acceptable in football. No human being could enjoy that. Sometimes, you just get back on the bus, shake your head and think ‘Wow.’”
On his positive memories of Sunderland
“There were some amazing, brilliant moments. A lot of the time you were reminded, wow, what a big club this is.
“I’d like to think the people who worked with me would say I’ve got very little ego, so if I’d been a disaster, I would say I crashed and burned.
“Even this season, we went to Burnley and Sheffield United in the League Cup, two Premier League clubs, and won and even that was … ah, but it doesn’t really matter now. I never once took the job for granted. I left with my head held high. Maybe some people will say ‘**** off’ to that, but it’s genuinely how I feel.”
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/this-hurts-bothers-lot-jack-17126232
