Supporters found it utterly delightful to witness players like Jack Clarke, Amad Diallo, and Dan Neil light up the Championship as they advanced to the play-offs at the first attempt.
However, since leaving the team, players like Ross Stewart, Alex Pritchard, Danny Batth, Lynden Gooch, and Bailey Wright have reduced the average age of the Sunderland team significantly. As a matter of fact, Wearside currently has five players older than 24.
The Black Cats have been devoid of experience and leadership due to Corry Evans’s 14-month absence from the field, and they seem to be paying a heavy price this season.
With six defeats in their previous seven games, Sunderland appears to be at a complete loss. They run the risk of being punished for fielding such a young first team.
Kristjaan Speakman is currently suffering as a result of his refusal to bring in some experienced players, despite supporters’ best efforts over the past year to persuade him to do so.
Roy Keane, the former manager of Sunderland, has now forewarned the squad about their contentious transfer policy, stating a youthful team in the Championship can be “eaten alive.”
“The problem with the Championship is that every club will believe they can get to the play-offs, but the average age to get promoted is 29, so the experience does matter,” Keane stated in an interview with the Stick to Football podcast.
I can see what your strategy would be, but if it’s working and you’re not winning every week, you clearly need a mixed bag. Your club will get eat alive in the championship if it has too many young players. It’s a difficult act of balance.
Last summer, Sunderland’s “balance” was completely discarded.
Although Kristjaan Speakman seemed to be the only one who didn’t fully get Roy Keane’s remarks, Sunderland supporters have known for a very long time that they aren’t really rocket science.
Without a doubt, the Black Cats’ acquisition of some outstanding young players has boosted our team tremendously, and without them, we most likely wouldn’t have made it to the playoffs.
The fact that we still have a lot of seasoned players to balance things out was a difference between last season and this one.
Gooch, Wright, Batth, Evans, O’Nien, Pritchard, Stewart, and Roberts were the players on the 2022 play-off winning squad; all of them had played senior football for many years.
It was a disastrous move on Speakman’s part to let go of five of those individuals, and now the young players have lost Tony Mowbray as a mentor.
The sporting director of the team now has one chance to right his wrongs this season, and supporters will be watching the transfer window with bated breath to see if he sticks to his disastrous transfer strategy or veers off course and starts to rebuild our faltering squad.
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