Sunderland boss Michael Beale has hit back at recent claims regarding his exit from the club.
Sunderland and Beale parted ways this week, with the 43-year-old overseeing just 12 games as manager.
He left the club after back-to-back defeats against two of the teams fighting relegation this season; Huddersfield Town and then Tony Mowbray’s Birmingham City.
Soon after Beale’s exit, reports emerged claiming that Beale had lost the Sunderland dressing room.
It was claimed that Beale made the Sunderland players do extra training after a defeat and that he gave himself the day off.
Michael Beale plays down Sunderland dressing room rift
But Beale has now responded to those claims.
Speaking to We Are Sunderland, the departed Black Cats boss said:
“Just want to clarify that no players were given extra training after the game at Birmingham. All players were off as scheduled on Sunday and back into training yesterday as normal. Saturday was our third game in seven days and the day off was needed for everyone as planned.
“I hope the club find the right manager moving forwards. The fans deserve to get back to the Premier League where a club of this size belongs. I wish the club every success moving forwards. The players and staff were a pleasure to work with and reports of issues behind the scenes are a long way wide of the mark.”
A difficult situation for Beale post-Sunderland
Whether or not the original claim about a dressing room rift is true remains to be seen. But Beale obviously felt strongly enough that they were untrue, that he had to speak out.
Either way, none of this really casts Beale in a positive light, especially after it was his earlier comments that began the initial divide between him and the Sunderland fans.
And of course, the Trai Hume handshake saga doesn’t help Beale’s cause either.
Even if the claims about unrest in the dressing room were untrue, it might have been best for Beale to stay quiet on this matter.
The club have moved on and Beale will also quickly move on and reassess where he goes next in his career, after what’s been a turbulent 12 months following his Rangers tenure and now his short-lived Sunderland tenure.
He remains a well-regarded coach in football, but maybe management isn’t for him. He could perhaps quite easily land a job as a no.2 or a first-team coach somewhere in England, though Beale will surely take a break from the game and let this current turbulence die down.
Sunderland meanwhile are back in the thick of it this weekend, with the Black Cats welcoming Swansea City to the Stadium of Light.