Page 25 - 370167 LP253351 A Love Supreme Magazine - A5 48pp (Issue 260)

Have any players surprised you?
I think nearly every player has surprised me, not so much Ross Stewart, ‘cos I thought he had the look of somebody who could step up, and Pritchard obviously has class and quality, but out of the rest, they’ve all done well. For me, Danny Batth has been immense at the back, a real solid defender and leader. Patto looks like he’s been playing for years, but he’s only played about fifty games. Away at Watford we put a load of young’uns on, and you’re thinking “friggin’ hell, what’s going on?” but they’re all playing with super confidence, and there’s so much pace amongst them. So, really, it’s the whole team that’s surprised me. I could go through the whole side, look at Clarke, he plays with superb confidence, and that rubs off on the others. It’s contagious.
When Stewart and Simms were injured, there were some calls to try Alese up front. As someone who’s played in both roles, would this have worked?
No. It takes years to learn the roles. It’s like in pre- season when we had Jack Diamond at centre forward, it’s an art, and I think you can go front to back once you’ve learned the way opposing forwards will play, but the other way, to play with your back to goal and bring people into play, when laying it off isn’t in your nature, no, that’s not going to work. It’s not like there’s five minutes to go and you’re chasing the game so you hoy defenders up to win headers, that’s different. You’d really struggle as a centre half going up front to start a game and having to understand the runs and getting battered by two or three centre halves, no, I don’t think you can do that.
Last season seemed to turn with the arrival of Alex Neil...
Oh aye, we went on that winning run, unbeaten from after the middle of February, and ended up at Wembley on the up. Not like last time in the play-offs, when we were struggling and very flat. Last May though, it all went according to plan on and off the pitch. There were loads of us former players there. I was sat with Gordon Armstrong, Gary Owers, Brian Atkinson. Loads of us,
but we’re all Sunderland fans. People dinnet realise that we might have been players, but we’re fans as well and we still care. It was a great day. The Former Players Association, we make an effort to do stuff within the
club and meet with Speakman and others on a quarterly basis to understand what the club’s doing. It’s so much better than it was, when Quinny had it, we were involved a little bit but then Donald and that ******* ****** Methven. (There followed a period of language best described as “industrial”). Sorry, I’ll stop swearing now. It’s much better these days. Anyway, getting out of League One was the aim, and we did it, and now we have to do things the right way to keep the club on the right course and not get carried away.
The way it is now, I think we’re set fair. With the young lads, it’s not going to happen overnight, there’ll be
off-days, so you’ve got to be patient, you can’t win every game, but because we’re playing so well most of the time, expectations have gone up. There’s minority who go on about Tony Mowbray, but he’s a good football man, and so is Mark Venus. I just think the club is in good hands at the minutes and we’re set fair to do OK. Steady this season, and build, bringing the young lads on. The plan isn’t to go for broke, but to build on what we’ve got.
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