Will Grigg article in The Athletic


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“At no point would I ever have wanted to leave. I would love to return. At the time, I felt as though I was forced into… not forced, but I felt like I didn’t have a choice when they accepted the offer. I had to leave. I should not have left when I did.”

It must be quite surreal to have an entire television episode dedicated to yourtransfer. Has he seen it? “No,” he reveals for the first time. “Definitely not.”

There must have been a curiosity? “It does not interest me at all. It is edited how the producers want it to be edited. I tell a lie, as I watched the previous series but after the Jack Rodwell incident (Rodwell was portrayed as being at loggerheads with the club over financial demands), it was not something I wanted to be involved in. Everyone I have ever spoken to says great things about Jack. The way his moment was edited, I felt it wasn’t a fair reflection (of him as a person) so it wasn’t something I was keen to be involved in, let alone watch.”

When did it start to feel like things may be going wrong? “Pretty quickly, just because of the expectation,” Grigg says. “I had never missed a chance like the Blackpool one in my life and I don’t think I ever would again. It was just a lapse of concentration and a genuine mistake.

“I have never really been affected by pressure. I have played in front of 50,000, I scored against Manchester City, I represented my country. It is not something that fazed me. I didn’t suit the team at all. I missed that chance but I didn’t miss many others until the end of the season. I scored five and to have scored double figures would have been a miracle in terms of the chances we created. I am not going to pretend I was playing my best football, I wasn’t at all, but I wasn’t playing in a team I was used to. I had been successful at MK Dons and Wigan. They were very different teams.”

He explains the tactical challenges at Sunderland. “It is a lot of things. Tactically, we played a 4-2-3-1 system before at Wigan. A lot of the time, I stayed away from the play and I was lucky enough to have a No 10 in Nick Powell who could create chances for me: left, right and centre. We got loads of crosses in, we had full-backs overlapping, played a bit more football and tried to get crosses into the box, which I thrive off. At Sunderland, we were a bit more direct, we didn’t have a No 10 like I was used to at previous clubs.

“At Sunderland, even now, you have a big target man in Charlie Wyke. He was used ahead of me. It tells you a lot in terms of the style of play. I don’t know if that comes from Sunderland and their background — they like to go back to front a bit — but it has definitely been the case while I have been there. They have wanted a big physical lad up front.

“The fans go back to Niall Quinn and Kevin Phillips, big man, small man. It is what they like and what they are after. Jack Ross tried to play a bit of football but that has got drastically different with the change of managers. We definitely play a lot more direct now and whether that affects what happens in the future, I do not know.”

He says: “The move was definitely close but the club decided it was not the best thing to do. It was a rival team and I was training really well, so the manager decided he did not want me to go to a rival team and do well. I am sure everyone at the club knows I am capable of that. It was difficult. I said I was happy to stay and fight for my place. But then, for the next six weeks, I was not even on the bench. That told me pretty much where I was at the time.”

How does that feel, as a record signing cut adrift? “It wasn’t easy at all,” Grigg says. “It has never happened to me in my career. I did not see it as my responsibility to seek an answer as I do not think the answer would have been anything that would have made a difference to my approach.

“I was working really hard, doing extra training and the gaffer even said that in his press conferences. Three games before the lockdown, I was back in. I was on the bench against Coventry and Gillingham, then came on for five minutes against Bristol Rovers. I was finally getting back into the mix and football stopped.

“When Phil Parkinson came in, I was the only available striker. I played the first eight or nine games and we won two of those. I only scored one goal. We were adapting to the new manager’s style and it is no secret that it was horrendous. We weren’t playing well and it took us a long time to adapt. I had a little bit of a chance but since then, my chances have been limited. It was not a secret that I wasn’t the sort of striker the manager wanted to use at that time.”
Seems fair enough
 
Absolute scum? Worked hard in training according to his manager, then played in a system where he can't have an impact. Sounds to me like your owner bought a player based on his wikipedia stats and his song, rather than his fit for the team.

It'd be like if Wenger had signed a big lumbering targetman then the Arsenal fans moaned that he didn't move enough for the intricate 1-2s that they played.
Working hard in training is a waste of time if you are not prepared to do it on the day that really counts, a Saturday afternoon.
He has that victim mentality where he likes to blame others, rather than look at himself. It is probably for that reason he defends jack Rodwell.
Creating chances is the responsibility of the team in 2020 and that includes the chances. When he is talking about creativity, it's like he's looking in from the outside with no accountability. I hope the fans can be allowed in and we really make his life in the North East so unbearable that he takes a paycut and leaves.
 
Absolute scum? Worked hard in training according to his manager, then played in a system where he can't have an impact. Sounds to me like your owner bought a player based on his wikipedia stats and his song, rather than his fit for the team.

It'd be like if Wenger had signed a big lumbering targetman then the Arsenal fans moaned that he didn't move enough for the intricate 1-2s that they played.
That's exactly what the owner did.

But if your Wenger example had happened, the Arsenal fans would have been right to twist about the stupidity of the purchase. Doubly so if the lumbering target man refused to even try.
 
Knowing the club and the fans I dispute this aswell, we always go back to the Quinn and Phillips era because we were good then, not because of the style. My favourite safc football was Poyet personally, along with the Welbeck, Gyan , Sess era under Bruce.

As a fanbase we do our best to propel the very worst of us to the front pages and as a result we are seen as regressive, long ball, 110% british plodders, shags who he wants, brexit, pissup, bring back allardyce, complete shit show. I don’t know why we do it to ourselves, maybe it is actually who we are. But to the rest of the world those are all points of shame and embarrassment. Yet another thing that needs to change before things ever improve.
FAN’S FAULT 🚨🚨🚨🚨
 
The fucker was in his pyjamas and dragged out of bed to sign for us ! Useless waste of time and no where to go with us now ! So yet another wage wasted while we can’t offload him !
 
He's a victim of circumstance somewhat in my opinion. He is not a very good footballer in context and if he had been signed for 300k and without the hype, I imagine he would of had a slightly better career here.

As it is, he is upset that he has failed to live upto unfair expectations and is looking for someone to blame, human nature.
 
I understand why people post full articles but this doesn’t sit comfortably with me. The Athletic is behind a paywall for a reason – it’s its business model.

Many of its employees are currently under threat of redundancy – and posting full articles from it doesn’t really help.

I pay for a subscription because I think it’s fair to pay for good writing and stories as I would any service I needed.

I’m probably in the minority, I realise. The economy isn’t looking to bright, but the future for the media industry is particularly bleak. Magazines, websites and whole companies are going to the wall.

It seems people these days expect their journalism, music, etc to be free. Why?

If you were a plumber and I asked you to fix my tap for nowt or a mechanic who I expected to do an oil change for free you’d get the right hump, quite rightly.


However this article is none of the above. It’s Grigg blaming everyone else but himself. The article plays on the stereotypes of thick northern clubs and uses Quinny and Phillips as an example of hoof it up and knock it in football.

It‘s one step away from clickbait and the thought of paying to read it feels ethically ambiguous to say the least.
 
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Jack Ross liked to play a bit of football? :lol: :lol: :lol:

It started off reasonably well IMO, I remember us smashing Scunthorpe 3-0, the first half of the game was some good stuff, we took our foot off of the gas in the second half but the first half was all one way traffic.

It soon turned to shit, though. Come 3/4 of the way through the season we were playing turgid shite.
 
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The Rodwell thing I can kind of understand, fact is outside of us people have always spoke okay about him. Same as Allardyce spoke well about him on that podcast the other month, how he managed to get a contract at Blackburn and Sheffield United.
 
He didn't want to come. Ross told SD not to pay over the odds for him. SD in his infinite wisdom pushed the deal through anyway because he'd made a massive mess of the Maja situation.

Really sums up where all of our problems stem from. He's still making the same mistakes, eg losing one of our best players earlier this week.

Not thrilled about Grigg giving that interview while still contracted here but frankly he's probably trying to force the club to let him go for the sake of his own career. If I was him I wouldn't feel great about my prospects given Parky is in charge and having a mountain to climb with the fans.
 
“At no point would I ever have wanted to leave. I would love to return. At the time, I felt as though I was forced into… not forced, but I felt like I didn’t have a choice when they accepted the offer. I had to leave. I should not have left when I did.”

It must be quite surreal to have an entire television episode dedicated to yourtransfer. Has he seen it? “No,” he reveals for the first time. “Definitely not.”

There must have been a curiosity? “It does not interest me at all. It is edited how the producers want it to be edited. I tell a lie, as I watched the previous series but after the Jack Rodwell incident (Rodwell was portrayed as being at loggerheads with the club over financial demands), it was not something I wanted to be involved in. Everyone I have ever spoken to says great things about Jack. The way his moment was edited, I felt it wasn’t a fair reflection (of him as a person) so it wasn’t something I was keen to be involved in, let alone watch.”

When did it start to feel like things may be going wrong? “Pretty quickly, just because of the expectation,” Grigg says. “I had never missed a chance like the Blackpool one in my life and I don’t think I ever would again. It was just a lapse of concentration and a genuine mistake.

“I have never really been affected by pressure. I have played in front of 50,000, I scored against Manchester City, I represented my country. It is not something that fazed me. I didn’t suit the team at all. I missed that chance but I didn’t miss many others until the end of the season. I scored five and to have scored double figures would have been a miracle in terms of the chances we created. I am not going to pretend I was playing my best football, I wasn’t at all, but I wasn’t playing in a team I was used to. I had been successful at MK Dons and Wigan. They were very different teams.”

He explains the tactical challenges at Sunderland. “It is a lot of things. Tactically, we played a 4-2-3-1 system before at Wigan. A lot of the time, I stayed away from the play and I was lucky enough to have a No 10 in Nick Powell who could create chances for me: left, right and centre. We got loads of crosses in, we had full-backs overlapping, played a bit more football and tried to get crosses into the box, which I thrive off. At Sunderland, we were a bit more direct, we didn’t have a No 10 like I was used to at previous clubs.

“At Sunderland, even now, you have a big target man in Charlie Wyke. He was used ahead of me. It tells you a lot in terms of the style of play. I don’t know if that comes from Sunderland and their background — they like to go back to front a bit — but it has definitely been the case while I have been there. They have wanted a big physical lad up front.

“The fans go back to Niall Quinn and Kevin Phillips, big man, small man. It is what they like and what they are after. Jack Ross tried to play a bit of football but that has got drastically different with the change of managers. We definitely play a lot more direct now and whether that affects what happens in the future, I do not know.”

He says: “The move was definitely close but the club decided it was not the best thing to do. It was a rival team and I was training really well, so the manager decided he did not want me to go to a rival team and do well. I am sure everyone at the club knows I am capable of that. It was difficult. I said I was happy to stay and fight for my place. But then, for the next six weeks, I was not even on the bench. That told me pretty much where I was at the time.”

How does that feel, as a record signing cut adrift? “It wasn’t easy at all,” Grigg says. “It has never happened to me in my career. I did not see it as my responsibility to seek an answer as I do not think the answer would have been anything that would have made a difference to my approach.

“I was working really hard, doing extra training and the gaffer even said that in his press conferences. Three games before the lockdown, I was back in. I was on the bench against Coventry and Gillingham, then came on for five minutes against Bristol Rovers. I was finally getting back into the mix and football stopped.

“When Phil Parkinson came in, I was the only available striker. I played the first eight or nine games and we won two of those. I only scored one goal. We were adapting to the new manager’s style and it is no secret that it was horrendous. We weren’t playing well and it took us a long time to adapt. I had a little bit of a chance but since then, my chances have been limited. It was not a secret that I wasn’t the sort of striker the manager wanted to use at that time.”

Ill-advised and a lot of bullshit but...

...sounds like his real problem is with Parkinson and, as much as he's got an agenda, it really doesn't seem like he's been managed well. And he's certainly right about the quality of football under Parkinson - it stinks.
 
He has to move on. I completely expect him to be a success elsewhere but at Sunderland it's over for him as the fans have lost faith in him, he's not happy with the club and style of play etc.

He needs to move on for everyone's sake.
 
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