Sunderland have been criticised following their decision to sack Tony Mowbray.
Taking to X, the 60-year-old’s former teammate Bernie Slaven suggested that the sacking was a huge mistake.
Sunderland announced that they had parted ways with Tony Mowbray late last night, days after the Black Cats had claimed a point from Millwall.
His departure comes 15 months after he was appointed manager, with the club sat ninth in the Championship after a run of only two wins in nine games.
While Sunderland had struggled for form recently, Mowbray had become a favourite on Wearside due to his brilliant work with a very young squad, having guided us to the play-offs last season.
There had been plenty of calls for Mowbray’s sacking after back-to-back defeats to Plymouth and Huddersfield Town, and Sunderland certainly weren’t hanging around as they sent him packing ahead of Saturday’s meeting with West Brom.
Mowbray’s former teammate has now leaped to his defence and has slammed the decision to sack him after such a successful first campaign in the Championship.
On his X profile, Slaven wrote: “Keep smiling Mogga, it won’t be long till you’re back in a job. I suppose getting into the play offs last season and 3 pts off top 6 this is classed as failure at Sunderland. Let’s see how they do without you. Sack the guys responsible for bringing players in + letting them go.”
I think there are a lot of Sunderland fans with the same view as Bernie Slaven after yesterday’s news.
Was Tony Mowbray’s sacking premature?
While there was a lot of people with the belief that he had taken us as far as he could, it is understandable that others think his sacking came too soon.
The Black Cats are certainly in a bad run of form at the minute, but Tony Mowbray’s excellent work with this squad makes him leaving a lot harder to take.
There is no doubt that the players absolutely loved him and so did the fans, but Sunderland could well have been in the bottom half by the time the new year rolled round if we had stuck with him.
While it’s not the end of the world if we don’t win promotion, we could see some key players leave next summer if we fail to even make the play-offs, so perhaps it was too much of a risk to keep him.
Every single Sunderland fan is very grateful for what he did on Wearside though and hopefully he will be back in work very soon.