O’Neill left to pick up the pieces after Bruce’s reign of terror – opposition focus Tue 20th Dec 2011 16:30 by Clive Whittingham Sunderland’s scatter fire approach to the transfer market has left them with an unbalanced team lacking attacking threat. Steve Bruce paid the price with his job, can Martin O’Neill clear up the mess he left behind? A MASSIVE ARTICLE IF YOU READ IT ALL, AND VERY INFORMATIVE. Overview For those, like me, increasingly pinning their hopes of QPR survival on a couple of quality January reinforcements our visitors on Wednesday night, Sunderland, may just temper your transfer window enthusiasm. New signings, it turns out, are not a guarantee of immediate success. In the last two and a half years Sunderland have signed 22 players at a cost just short of £74m, offloaded 34 to recoup £65.75m of that and for all of it they’re no better, and arguably worse, than they were when Steve Bruce took over from Ricky Spragia at the beginning of the process. In all, 56 transfers have been completed in one form or another and the upshot is a team with only one genuine left sided player and virtually no attack whatsoever. Little wonder then that Bruce has recently fallen on his sword. Sunderland’s owner Ellis Short and chairman Niall Quinn seem, on the face of things, to be ideal boardroom material. Quinn played for Sunderland from 1996 to 2002 so has a good understanding of the club and its supporters while Short has certainly not been shy of throwing some money at the team since he took over a 30% stake in 2008. He’s a quiet, private and reserved man more at home when purchasing Scottish castles than Premiership footballers and leaves Quinn as the public face of the boardroom. The club as a whole seems geared to success as well with a massive state of the art stadium, excellent training complex, a large and vocal home support and financial security. Why then have they become embroiled in another relegation scrap in a league where much smaller outfits with much more meagre means have successfully survived and prospered – Fulham, Stoke, West Brom and perhaps Norwich, Swansea and even QPR this term? For me the problem for sometime in this part of the world has been the manager. First Roy Keane and then Steve Bruce, with a brief spell for Ricky Spragia in between, have thrown good money after bad at an astonishing amount of players. Upon promotion to the Premiership Keane immediately signed 15 players at a cost of £43m then spent another £15m a season later. The upshot of this was two near relegation misses and, eventually, his departure. Of those 15 players Keane signed initially in 2007/08 only two, Craig Gordon and Kieran Richardson, remain at the club today. That’s fairly typical of the chronic lack of long term planning and joined up thinking that has gone into creating the Sunderland team we welcome on Wednesday – a team with no left side, and no attack despite 56 transfers in two and a half years. Roughly this time last year Steve Bruce took a Sunderland team topped off by Asamoah Gyan and Danny Welbeck with support in midfield from Jordan Henderson to Chelsea and comprehensively played them off the park in a 3-0 win. With Darren Bent to come back into the side the Mackems looked well set for good times ahead. In the summer, rightly, they focussed on strengthening the defence with Wes Brown and John O’Shea the headline acquisitions from Manchester United. In the meantime though they sold Darren Bent to Aston Villa, Jordan Henderson to Liverpool, Gyan has gone on loan to the Middle East and Welbeck has returned to his parent club at the end of a loan spell. In their place has come Nicklas Bendtner who would be the world’s greatest centre forward if his ability matched up to his opinion of his own worth but, as it doesn’t, is often little more than an enormous waste of flesh and hair gel. So now the defence is sorted, only Fulham have conceded less outside the top six, but the attack is woefully inadequate. As ever Bruce’s sacking was met with the usual outpouring from the usual suspects – Sam Allardyce, who has never once believed a managerial sacking to be justified in the history of the game, used his Evening Standard column to say Bruce should have been given more time and backing. Really Sam? More time and more money, after 56 transfers in two and a half years had made the team worse? Christ alive. It should of course be pointed out that the bids received for both Bent and Henderson were astronomically high and had to be accepted, while Gyan seems to have forced a move through for his own financial gain, but it’s that idea of joined up thinking that springs to mind again. Even before Gyan left should there not have been some serious bids for some serious frontmen made in the summer given that Bent and Welbeck had definitely gone? Peter Crouch, Demba Ba, Yakubu, Craig Bellamy, Roque Santa Cruz and others all moved in the summer without Sunderland registering serious interest – they even got beaten to the DJ Campbell signing by Flavio Briatore owned QPR at a time when we were refusing to spend any money on anybody. What Sunderland have needed, really from the day they arrived back in this division, is a strong and experienced manager who has a clearly defined and refined style of play and system that he knows and has worked in the past. Somebody a notoriously demanding set of supporters can get behind and welcome into the club without concerns about any latent connections with the city of Newcastle. Somebody with a track record of getting the very best out of every player and penny he has at his disposal. Quite why it’s taken them this long to appoint Martin O’Neill is a mystery to me. '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Full articles on website with photos and interviews, I make no apologies for nicking someone elses article, the way I see it is he is getting more fame by being more widely read. http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/fb_news.php?storyid=15270 billofengland This is a massive article, very informative .
Well it certainly hits the nail on the head several times. The key point being the one we all bang on about, is that this time last year we had Bent, Gyan and Welbeck as strikers. Today as we prepare for a game that this time last year we may have been expecting to win, we are struggling or just hoping for a point and we are involved in a bitter relegation struggle. Now I am sure SB would have wanted to keep Bent, Gyan and Welbeck, when they left where was the plan 'B', spending on Wickham, Ji, old manure players and a midfielder before strikers was just plain stupid. When SB came in I thought he had agood head on his shoulders and for a while it looked as if he was going to be OK, but he came unstuck in quite a big way. Now as the article suggests MoN is a class ahead of SB and I believe he will prove it, the big 'if' is that Mr Short has to provide funds to buy a goal scorer or two in Jan, probably letting Bendtner go at the same time.
I actually still belive Bendtner can produce the goods. He scores goals for Denmark on a regular basis, MON just needs to find out how to get him doing the same for us.
Dan I would love to be proved wrong, but to argue my point. I used to live in London and had neighbours who had several season tickets for Arsenal and if one was spare used to go along. Nearly all my old Arsenal mates think Bendtner is rubbish and are very happy to get rid and do not want him back. Plus although MoN is a good manager, if there has been one guy in the last 10 years in the EPL that has brought the best out of young talent it has been Wenger he failed with 'Nico' To argue against my point, in the first few games for Sunderland he often looked the best player on the pitch, so MoN needs to get him back to that form and playing in the centre forward position not on the wing or in midfield.
Great read and a perfect answer to anyone who says that Bruce wasn't given enough time. I thought he should have been peddled in the summer and Mon brought in and although we are now in a relegation scrap, we have the right man for the job now. 56 transfers in 2.5 years is ridiculous. I knew it was a lot but I dare bet the likes of Wenger and SAF haven't each had 56 transfers in the last 10 years. We are worse off now than we were under sbragia, as at least we still had a recognised strike force back then. We have taken 2 or 3 massive steps backwards in the last 18 months and its going to take Mon until at least the summer to get it right, although the repair work can start in a couple of weeks.
