Is MoN right when he says


Status
Not open for further replies.
The only time we've been safe with 8 games to go was under MON. People love to rewrite history on here and totally dismiss his era because of the lacklustre final months. Was plenty sparkle and support for him for his first 12 months here. Sess and Bendtner up front were quality under him. Danny Rose flourished too. O'Shea, Larsson and Brown were solid & Mig was class.
 
Fair enough but at least know to use him.

He played largely in 4-2-3-1 at Swansea with pacy wingers. That was never ONeills formation whilst here. Most of our football was hit and hope whilst trying to keep it tight at the back.

He was most successful at Villa where they had pace up top in Young, Downing and Agbonlahor. He tried to recreate that here but didn't sign the right players for it. Towards the end his heart just didn't seem in it.

He still has the highest win ratio of any manager during our current PL run so what does that say about those who preceded and followed him.......and there was nothing wrong at all with the football we played in his first season here. Before I condemn the man (and I did call for his dismissal during the second season) I'd really like to know just why his heart wasn't in it as you say. Was he undermined from above with the proposed implementation of a DOF system above him or was he just a washed up old has been......I'm not entirely convinced it was the latter.
 
The only time we've been safe with 8 games to go was under MON. People love to rewrite history on here and totally dismiss his era because of the lacklustre final months. Was plenty sparkle and support for him for his first 12 months here. Sess and Bendtner up front were quality under him. Danny Rose flourished too. O'Shea, Larsson and Brown were solid & Mig was class.

Pretty sure that Brown only played a few games under O'Neill. Got injured in the home cup game with Boro and was out for nearly 2 years after that if I remember right.
 
For those saying it was the worst football they'd seen under mon, the Howard wilkinson era trumped that!
 
'If I'd been given half a chance at Sunderland, I'd have succeeded.'
As reported by George Caulkin in an article today.
Fair comment or rose tinted specs?

Half a chance? Sorry MoN I would have LOVED you to have made a fist of it but you only earned one or two fingers :( Especially for the fanaticism in going after a donkey like Graham for SO much money!
 
If he had been given any more time we would have played at least a season of Championship footrball, if not more. A dinosaur, sadly, who has now joined the Steve Bruce 'couldn't cut it at Sunderland and bitter about it' club.
 
Common knowledge how? I'm not calling you a liar or owt by the way it's just something I've heard a few times on here and never seen anything to back it up.
It's a well known fact that Martin O'Neill employed the same tactics as Clough when it came to his presence on the training ground. Even Redknapp alludes to it in his autobiography
Logon or register to see this image


I don't think that this was the issue (although the absence of Robertson could said to be a contributing factor as allegedly the players had no respect for Walton) I think ONeil had had his time as a club manager and wasn't up to the day to day grind. His recruitment was awful and the tactics, despite having a front four of Johnsn, Sess, Fletcher and McClean were just terrible. Wasn't there a stat that said we'd had the fewest shots in the first five or six games out of every team in the country?
 
Half a chance? Sorry MoN I would have LOVED you to have made a fist of it but you only earned one or two fingers :( Especially for the fanaticism in going after a donkey like Graham for SO much money!

yep,

love to hear him explain that one!
we would have been relegated if he stayed, no doubt about it
 
Maybe if hed appointed Keano as his assistant. He never seemed to be the same guy without Robertson. There were off the field / family issues too that sdid not help his focus but history proves that Ellis was right
 
Good piece here from The Guardian around the time he was sacked
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/mar/31/martin-oneill-sunderland

Martin O'Neill had tried to project the sense that he was still in control. He was asked how he felt about Sunderland's chances of staying up and he looked his questioner in the eye and said, with a sudden and incongruous smile, that he was still "buoyant". Glass half-full or half-empty? "Three-quarters full," he said from the top table at Sunderland's press room. Then he thanked everyone and left the stage, oblivious to the fact they would be his final words as manager and the club were already planning his removal.

His words had carried a defiance that simply was not there as he stood on the touchline, as forlorn and inactive as maybe at any other time in his managerial career, watching his team go against pretty much everything upon which he has based his professional life. O'Neill's name used to be synonymous with teams that gave everything. He had the rare ability to energise an entire club, to instil confidence and belief. He had the enthusiasm and drive and sheer will that would coax lung-splitting efforts from his players. They loved to please him.

Yet this profession has plenty of examples of managers who have known nothing but success and then, almost inexplicably, encountered difficulties. O'Neill can be added to the list now. At Leicester, he took a middling second-tier club to one that had four successive top-10 finishes in the Premier League and reached three League Cup finals. At Celtic there were three Scottish titles and four cups, establishing him as their most successful manager since Jock Stein. O'Neill was shortlisted for the England job, frequently talked up as a possible replacement for Sir Alex Ferguson.

The difficult part is knowing what precisely has changed. One theory is that maybe the game has started to leave him behind and that his tactics have become outmoded. The immediate response to that is that he has previously demonstrated he possesses one of the sharpest minds in football.

Yet there is no point dressing it up as something that it is not: Sunderland, under his watch, had become a soft touch. Watching them meekly lose 1-0 to Manchester United in his final game, it was difficult not to wonder what had become of the O'Neill of yesteryear, the man once described as football's equivalent of the Duracell bunny because of the way he never stood still on the touchline. That was some manager back then, with some force of personality.

For Sunderland's owner, Ellis Short, perhaps the most alarming thing is that the team are deteriorating just at the point when the other relegation-threatened clubs – most notably Wigan Athletic, Southampton and Aston Villa – are improving to varying degrees.

O'Neill admitted on Saturdaythat his team's confidence was low. He tried to seize the positives from a slightly better second half but he was grasping at some very thin straws. The most relevant point he made was that a team struggling for self-belief can still press the ball, go into tackles, run hard. Sunderland had done none of these things and, though he did effect some form of change with his words at half-time, his own body language was alarming.

O'Neill used to be a young 60. He still is, in many respects, but the energy is no longer there, the ability to work wonders with a football team. Maybe he is missing his old mate John Robertson, in happier days the Peter Taylor to his Brian Clough. Or maybe it's just a fact of football life that someone who has excelled in the past can lose their way. Whatever it is, Short has clearly concluded that it is a full-blown slump rather than a blip.

O'Neill approached his first anniversary on a run of two wins from the last 21 league games going back to last season. At one point, Opta's statistics showed that only one other team, Fortuna Düsseldorf, had managed fewer shots on target throughout the top five leagues in Europe. Their current run, no wins in eight games, has seen them fall to 16th position, having played a game more than the clubs below them, Wigan and Villa, both a point behind.

Managers, like players, can peak early. It is 13 years since O'Neill's last win at Wembley with Leicester and 10 since he took Celtic to the Uefa Cup final. Sunderland should have been a snug fit – O'Neill, always contrary, had chosen them as his boyhood club simply to go against the grain – and initially the improvement was sharp and considerable. This season, however, has been a long and unhappy grind. Sunderland, to put it into context, have taken only six points all season after conceding the opening goal. There is a lack of competitive courage when that was once the quality that ran through O'Neill's teams.

O'Neill has been unable to coax the best from a £10m signing in Adam Johnson. Danny Rose, a loan player from Tottenham, probably has the most legitimate credentials to be their player of the year but the competition, bar possibly the goalkeeper Simon Mignolet, is sparse. James McClean has tailed off. It's the same for Stéphane Sessègnon. Danny Graham, signed from Swansea City in January, has yet to score.

Many will accuse Short of short-termism, of acting with too much haste, of falling into the trap of every impatient football club owner. For now, we cannot be sure whether there is a plan in place, with a replacement already identified. At the same time, this is not the O'Neill we used to revere. The old magic has all but disappeared this season.
 
I thought the football under Poyet was worse, we've made worse signings than Graham before and since and Norwich at home under Dick and away under Poyet were far worse.

But no, he seemed to have lost all motivation. We had a decent run at Christmas which coincided with Shearer slagging him off and him coming out firing.

I liked the bloke and I don't think it was as bad or as clear cut as people make out now but his sacking was justified.
 
The only time we've been safe with 8 games to go was under MON. People love to rewrite history on here and totally dismiss his era because of the lacklustre final months. Was plenty sparkle and support for him for his first 12 months here. Sess and Bendtner up front were quality under him. Danny Rose flourished too. O'Shea, Larsson and Brown were solid & Mig was class.
We'd have gone down if he hadn't left. Imo we weren't winning another game.
 
It's a well known fact that Martin O'Neill employed the same tactics as Clough when it came to his presence on the training ground. Even Redknapp alludes to it in his autobiography
Logon or register to see this image


I don't think that this was the issue (although the absence of Robertson could said to be a contributing factor as allegedly the players had no respect for Walton) I think ONeil had had his time as a club manager and wasn't up to the day to day grind. His recruitment was awful and the tactics, despite having a front four of Johnsn, Sess, Fletcher and McClean were just terrible. Wasn't there a stat that said we'd had the fewest shots in the first five or six games out of every team in the country?
Spot on. We barely crossed the bloody halfway line towards the end of his tenure.
 
Spot on. We barely crossed the bloody halfway line towards the end of his tenure.
Still maintain the football was worse under Poyet in the post 0-8 period. Sat explaining to my son why we had just signed up for Season Cards whilst 0-4 down at home to Villa was a treat....
 
Honestly he just seemed to have cloud hanging over him. The energy seemed to evaporate after the initial flurry and fade at such an alarming rate. Players clearly were not fit & clearly things were not right at club. Few years earlier and honestly think it would have been very different.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top