Page 4 - 358264 LP231909 A Love Supreme 48pp A5 (Issue 257)

ALS - 1 HODGSONS BUILDING - STADIUM WAY - SUNDERLAND - SR5 1BT
editorial ISSUE #257
Hello and welcome to issue 257 of A Love Supreme, arriving in the wake of the forty sixth managerial change in my lifetime, after only six before that, and I’m not that old.
“Once is unfortunate, twice is careless”, according to Oscar Wilde. Quite what the Irish wordsmith would have made of something happening four times (Portsmouth, Rotherham, Sheff Weds, Bolton) as has happened with
us and heavy away defeats this season, is a mystery. He’d probably have come up with some pithy quote about learning from your mistakes and if there’s one mistake that LJ made, it was not learning from mistakes. Once he’d settled on three central defenders, and in doing so became the first Sunderland boss to make that formation actually work for more than the odd game, he should have stuck with it. Changing to a flat back four at Portsmouth ended in disaster but switched back to three at Gillingham in the next game and won. That formation was kept for the 4-0 win at Crewe, and while Rotherham can be sort of accepted as the one-off, but a few days later at Hillsborough was with a flat back four, as was the capitulation in his last game in charge.
If it aint broke, don’t fix it. Some people have claimed his dismissal is a knee-jerk reaction, but it isn’t.
surprise me about our club, to be honest, but the
four real hammerings and our inability to keep clean sheets away from home are what I think have been LJ’s undoing. At home, form has been acceptable
if not brilliant, with eleven wins, one draw, and two defeats, achieved by scoring 31 goals in those fifteen games while conceding only nine. Away is a different picture, with five wins, five draws, and five defeats thanks to scoring 22 and conceding 30 in the fifteen games. Only one side has let in more away from home and they are Doncaster who are bottom of the league.
A knee-jerk reaction would have been to get shot after those two defeats in South Yorkshire at the beginning of November. Of course, I’m sad to see him go, as I want continuity at the club, even if that continuity lasts only three or four years,
about playing three at the back, he’s played most of the season, and he joins another central defender, Younger, in leaving for another League One team. With Hume (D) off to Pompey (and straight into the side) that’s three defenders out and two in, so perhaps there will be more of Xhemaji, and more time spent keeping Bailey Wright fit enough to play. Coming in
but I’m not in the least surprised. Very little would 04 ALOVESUPREME ISSUE257
is central midfielder Jay Matete from Fleetwood, so perhaps he’ll have an instant job of protecting the central defence. He comes with glowing references from the Cod Army, as you’d expect, so let’s hope he matches their assessment of him... oh, and some kid
Anyway, he’s gone, and we have to move on, especially as his departure coincided with the creaking shut of the transfer window. Our current structure means that the head coach is just another cog in the Red and White machine and that somebody else is doing the buying and selling. Getting rid of Flanagan seems a strange move. I’ve just talked