After overseeing Sunderland for a month, Michael Beale has thought back on the ups and downs of his tenure. Beale believes that it has been a good month when you consider our absent players.
ARE YOU BEING CALLED TOO BADLY?
We lost Niall Huggins in my first game, and I believe it’s something that gets missed a lot because he was a key player for us early in the season. In addition to Dennis Cirkin, we also lost Bradley Dack and Patrick Roberts, making four starters out of them. Obviously, any team in our league that suffers losses of that nature will be affected as a whole. Of course, our team has young players, but when it comes to the guys
who are working here, I’m pretty happy with their training levels, and I’m working with those men. Undoubtedly, attention is focused on one or two of them going forward. You know, we might kill them a little bit if we bring in the strain of playing for a team our size right now. You simply need to have faith in our judgment that we’re making progress, and they will eventually arrive.
TENSIONS
“It would be OK, game on, when the season began or the boys returned for preseason on June 28, the date when we are in the league. Thus, the squad’s internal atmosphere must remain positive, and I have no doubt that the supporters will provide the team with tremendous support over the next two home games. To be honest, we haven’t had the best away performance this season, but we have played three of the last four away games in the league. Though we lost a close game over the weekend, the group’s positivity showed that it was disappointing to return. We went to Hull, a team nearby, and defeated them.
FIRST MONTH ON WEARSIDE
“Well I think it’ll be a month just before the game on Friday so it’s been everything I expected it to be, it’s been a wonderful football club. There’s a lot of expectation, it’s a young group that’s got lots of potential but we’ve got to move towards fulfilling it and being more consistent is probably the big word. I think our team, from what I’ve seen, shouldn’t be scared of anybody in this division. We should go into every game with real optimism and then it’s going to come down to our quality in both boxes. In terms of the demand of the job, I was aware that it’s something that you’re looking for. You want to go in where there’s passion and demand for results and we’ve got it here as I say, the biggest thing for me is when pre-season started would the group have been satisfied, not happy, satisfied with where we are now knowing that we’ve got the games coming up and the end of the season? I think we would, so now it’s time for us, everybody, staff, players and the fans outside to really push the next three or four months because the clubs around us are doing that, uniting and pushing. It’s important we’re doing the same here, I think that we have every single chance of having an excellent end to the season.”
TENSIONS
GETTING GOING WITH HIS STYLE
“To be honest, I think that will take some time. Over time, you’ll see fundamental changes within the team. I believe that while we talk about the squad size and the main players, we’re attempting to maintain things relatively unchanged for them in terms of organization and defensive form, but eventually things will undoubtedly change. Adding one or two players to the team, or bringing back one or two injured players, and maybe bringing in another left-sided defender. With Aji returning, we now have the option to move to a back three, and eventually, either one of
TENSIONS
GETTING GOING WITH HIS STYLE
“There is no doubt that I will alter the final third’s dynamic. Because we are a possession-based team, our defensive record—which I believe is fourth, joint-fourth, or fifth best in the league—often goes unnoticed. We should definitely do better there as we rank just 13th or 14th in terms of goal scoring.
