It took a while, longer than Leicester City, longer than Norwich City, but eventually Sunderland fell behind on Saturday for the third match in a row against Swansea. Dick Advocaat could only sigh as he cut a forlorn figure on the touchline.



The home support, their loyalty tested to breaking point had every right to feel déjà vu sweep over them as Bafetimbi Gomis wheeled away to celebrate; another relegation battle looming. An exact start point for the problems is difficult to isolate, but the dismissal of Martin O’Neill was certainly the first crack.

Owner Ellis Short had trusted O’Neill not only with his team but also his cheque book. The American’s first managerial appointment, O’Neill had a joke for every difficult press conference and diffused the tension with a clever line or a quip. The Irishman’s first summer in charge saw over £30million spent on transfers and nine first-team players pose with scarves at the Academy of Light.

Unfortunately he would be gone by March. Of his failings, the lack of discipline was seen as one of the biggest and in his place arrived Paolo Di Canio. The next revolution could begin. Mayonnaise and coke were banned, Adam Johnson looked lean and the club turned the dial in the opposite direction in the transfer market.

Gone were marquee signings like Johnson. O’Neill had rarely shopped outside of the UK and so in came a director of football, Roberto De Fanti. The ideas did not mesh well. Of the fourteen new recruits few were of the quality needed to improve a side that had barely survived relegation. “‘We had to build a team from scratch,” De Fanti told the Guardian earlier this year. Overpaying in the domestic market for players like Steven Fletcher and Danny Graham was now cast alongside a parsimony in the central European market as eight new nationalities arrived at the club.

Unsurprisingly such wholesale changes meant another season of struggling, with Di Canio admitting there was a language barrier on the training pitch. Once again the manager left and Gustavo Poyet arrived. There had been too much discipline at the club and more experience was required in the Sunderland manager. The next revolution could begin.

In came a replacement for De Fanti, Lee Congerton, a man that was previously of Chelsea and Hamburg. His record in Germany is best described as hit and miss and during Poyet’s time at the club their relationship was tense. The Uruguayan wanted players he knew. He signed Brighton pair Liam Bridcutt & Will Buckley and speak openly how he wanted a compatriot in the squad. Congerton was not convinced and by this point the squad was an amalgamation of the previous regimes.

Each failed revolution had left its mark on the starting eleven with a variety of players none of whom were suited to the same tactical style. De Fanti’s European players were eager to build the play; O’Neill’s British based players were more suited to a direct style. Meanwhile Poyet’s players were largely just not good enough. The former Brighton boss attempted to reinvent a number of the players into something they were not - Lee Cattermole cast as deep-lying playmaker.

It was a jarring an uneasy watch. There was simply no harmony throughout the club. Last summer Congerton signed an attacking full-back in Patrick Van Aanholt without seemingly any consideration for the rest of the defence. Just like those before him there was little thought given to the wider picture and how these players would all intermix together. Van Aanholt would drive forward and leave space in behind, isolating the two centre-backs, both of whom are bereft of pace.

Poyet spoke of the issues at the weekend while working for TV2 in Norway. “They are trying to play but they are not having the ability to play,” he bluntly stated. “It is like you are in between [two styles]. Listen it happened to me so I know how Dick Advocaat is feeling.”

“They are taking too many risks. I hope one day people will wake up in there and think, Martin O’Neill was right, Paolo Di Canio was right, Gus Poyet was right, Dick Advocaat was right, we need to change something.”

The lack of harmony between Congerton and Poyet was typified by a story Poyet told in which he was forced to use winger Charis Mavrias at right-back due to Billy Jones suffering an injury. “He had no chance to play right back,” Poyet said. “He was a proper winger with no idea of defending. Is that how to prepare for the Premier League?”

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