Former team mates united in need to improve their current side’s fortunes
It’s become something of a truism about the English game that in the face of the huge spending by clubs like Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool, you really can only buy success and, as Manchester City are currently demonstrating; even with very deep pockets indeed there are absolutely no guarantees.
Back in the 1950s Sunderland spent so much money on players that they were nicknamed the Bank of England club but it got them nowhere really and by the end of the decade they had been relegated amid a scandal over illegal payments to players. Fifty years on, current chairman Niall Quinn must be wondering just how much the club has to spend simply to achieve a reasonable measure of stability.
When Roy Keane was at the Stadium of Light, promotion was effectively bought by snapping up proven players at Championship level with big wages and long term contracts. The problems started when it became apparent that the players were not good enough to make an impact on the top flight and so new ones had to be acquired.
The original squad could not be off loaded because they were so well paid and Keane then compounded the problem by buying so poorly that yet more signings had to be made as the club’s position slipped and relegation became a major threat.
At one stage there were more than 40 first team squad players and when I mentioned to an English colleague based in the area that there must be a team of players there signed by Keane who he was actively trying to get rid of, the journalist replied that there was comfortably a team’s worth of players the Corkman had been trying to move on from within a week of having brought them in.
In the early weeks of the club’s second season in the top flight under Keane, Sunderland briefly hit 6th place in the table only to tumble back to 18th by the end of November. A week or two later he was gone. This year, under Bruce, the club also hit 6th but currently lie 13th having taken five points from their last 11 games which is sub 20 point for the season form.
The club have had an awful lost of injuries to contend with but some key players have also stopped playing with Steed Malbranque, for instance, looking like a complete passenger at times, Andy Reid’s early season form deserting him and, perhaps inevitably, Darren Bent losing his tremendous early season momentum.
In the course of the side’s current run, they were held at home by Portsmouth but the southerners have not been able to sort their problems out in the way that might have been hoped and Bruce, with a few players having returned in recent weeks and another few brought in on loan during the transfer window, will surely see tonight’s game as a major opportunity to halt the slide.
Keane, meanwhile, needs his current side to kick on from simply having become harder to beat from around the end of October. The arrival of Daryl Murphy and David Healy should add goals which, combined with a gradual tightening of the defence may yet provide the basis for the team to climb free of the battle for avoid relegation.
Neither man has the anything like the money required to ever challenge for honours at the current clubs but both control budgets that should be big enough to produce better than we have seen from their teams so far this season. And both have opportunities this week to show that things are moving in the right direction again.
Bets
€25 double on Sunderland 90/+0.5) to beat Portsmouth away and Stoke (0/+0.5) to beat Wigan away at 3.64.
€25 double on West Brom (-1) to beat Scunthorpe and Ipswich (0) to beat QPR away @ 2.78.
Categories: Soccer
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