"You got your wish then?"
That was how I found out Michael Beale had left SAFC. A text message from a former work colleague who became a very good pal. Such a good pal that it was he who delivered to me the latest soap opera style stuff coming out of our football club. Five words sent to confirm what all the rumours had suggested; that we were once again looking for new manager. Cheers Dave, thanks a lot. What a pal you are.
Rumours had swirled on social media for a good 24 hours that Michael Beale had indeed been sacked. At one point, people were speculating that he may have even walked of his own accord. There was never any real chance of that happening. I think that the majority of supporters weren't in the slightest bit surprised when the news finally broke. I'm yet to see anyone say that it is the wrong decision. It has been yet another whirlwind period for the club, even by our standards; a total of 63 days to be exact. Twelve matches, ten of which I attended in person. Some of you will have been to all twelve. Four wins and six defeats. Beale's departure leaves us hunting once again for another manager. I can't remember a time like it. Not even under Wilkinson, Moyes, Grayson or Parkinson. Where exactly do we go from here?
Well, to Mike Dodds it seems. He has been given the job once again, on an interim basis, which with hindsight, is what probably should have happened once number one managerial target William Still was unattainable after Tony Mowbray had left the club. There is even a debate as to whether sacking Mowbray in the first place was the right course of action to take. Asking Dodds to take the team for six months, including the derby, would have been a massive call, but we will never know whether such a decision would have yielded better or even worse results than appointing Beale. This will already be Dodds' third caretaker spell at the club.
I'm not about to tear apart the last 63 days, that has already been done plenty of times already, in various stages along the way and in collective assessments now that Beale has departed. I'll leave the debates around extra training after defeats, snubbed handshakes and burner accounts on social media to everyone else. What matters is our football club, the players that play for it, the staff that work for it, and most important of all, the fans that dedicate their lives to it. The whole saga is just another one to put with countless others that we have had to endure over the years. Last season felt like we were finally going places. Oh how quickly it can all change.
What we need now is another period of stability, and I believe Mike Dodds is the man to steady the ship. Whether he can fix the hole in the hull is another matter. That may well be a job for the next Head Coach, but what we can say is that the season is still salvageable. He has been given the final thirteen games of the season. It is a free hit. The players seem to like Dodds, and the club certainly rate him very highly. It was telling that Michael Beale was unable to bring in his own staff to the club, and it would have been interesting to see if leaning on his own man for advice would have made any substantial difference to results on the pitch. On the other hand, Beale knew what he was signing up for when he took the job.
It's never nice to see anyone lose their job, but there was a sense of inevitability about this situation. Once you realise that you have a massively uphill task to win over the fans who were sceptical at best at your appointment and are scrutinising everything you say and do, losing emphatically 3-0 at home in you first game isn't really the way to go about silencing the doubters. Neither is surrendering a local derby either.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a thawing of the ice, after a good second half display at home to Plymouth Argyle. I thought we may well have turned a corner. I meant in a positive way. The games at Huddersfield and Birmingham were as abject as they come. They would not have been out of place in our ill-fated 2017/18 season, and that is saying something.
That said, the personal attacks on Beale were way, way over the top. You can be critical of managers, owners and players and articulate your views in a constructive way; absolutely. Some of the comments and the mocked up images that were circulated around social media are not what Sunderland AFC is all about. The minority certainly went too far in that regard.
As for "getting my wish" well, I'm not entirely sure that is 100% true. What I want, like every supporter, is a team that we enjoy watching and are proud to call ours. Never once in those 63 days did I feel that way. In my first article on Beale when he was appointed, I said that we had to back him from the start.
If you had said to me at the end of last season, that this would be where we'd be in February 2024, I'd have said that you were mad. Completely bonkers. Myself and my brother chatted to a couple from Birmingham after the home game against them back in November. They wanted Wayne Rooney out of St Andrews that day. Again, if someone had told me that just over a month later Rooney would be indeed be given the chop, we'd sack Tony Mowbray, Birmingham City would replace Rooney with him, and we'd end up in the mess we know find ourselves, again, I'd have said you were stark raving mad. Incredibly though, that is now where we find ourselves.
Of course, we'll get behind Mike Dodds and the players, we always do. Like I said, the season is still salvageable and all is not lost. With a run of very tough fixtures coming up and a mounting injury list, it will be extremely tough to gatecrash the top six, but we will certainly give it one hell of a go. Who knows, Sunderland being Sunderland, absolutely anything can happen between now and the end of the season.
