A Sunderland legend has not held back in his review of the Black Cats’ defeat vs Hull City last night.
Sunderland hosted and lost 1-0 against fellow top six rivals Hull City at the Stadium of Light last night.
Fans watched a low-quality, almost tedious 90 minutes of football, with a deflected match-winning goal from Fabio Carvalho summing up the lack of quality from the two sides.
But Hull City got the win, and in what boss Liam Rosenior said was probably their worst performance of the season so far.
It only serves to highlight Sunderland’s poor performance on the night, and boss Michael Beale appears to be taking all the blame.
Michael Gray aims dig at Michael Beale after ‘shocking’ Sunderland performance
There was an overriding theme on social media last night where Sunderland fans were concerned.
Beale’s style of play has so far given us very little hope of the club moving forward under his watch; Sunderland were extremely negative, passing sideways and sitting deep, and quite clearly relying on Jack Clarke to do something special.
Beale was on the receiving end of a lot of fan criticism last night and now Sunderland legend Michael Gray, who made more than 350 total appearances for the Black Cats between 1992 and 2004, has weighed in on the situation.
He posted on X after the game last night:
Good coach or not, Beale is not the man for the job
Beale has now had three good jobs in football; QPR, Rangers, and Sunderland, and he’s not performed well since the very start of his QPR tenure.
He lost the final four games as R’s manager and was hugely disliked at Ibrox. And now after seven games and four defeats as Black Cats boss, he’s already becoming a hugely contested figure.
And like Gray points out, this dip in form and turgid style of play is nothing to do with the players.
This same set of players was performing much more freely at the start of the season, but in such a short space of time, Beale has found a way to completely drain any kind of drive and forward-thinking from the side.
It’s not what Sunderland fans want and it’s surely not what the Sunderland owners want to see either.
But they made a bold decision to sack Tony Mowbray and replace him with Beale, and it seems likely that they’ll at least give Beale some new signings and a bit more time to see if this can work out; not only for Beale but for their own reputation too.
Up next is a home game vs Stoke City next weekend.