Alex Neil has explained what he believed was ‘perfect’ about the Sunderland team that he inherited.
Alex Neil arrived in Sunderland to a rather disappointed reception in February 2022, with the club sat fourth in the League One table.
After suffering a 2-1 loss to MK Dons, the Scot finished the season undefeated, winning eight of their final 15 games and advancing to the play-off final.
After Stewart Donald brought in a lot of dead wood, Kristjaan Speakman did a fantastic job bringing in players like Trai Hume, Alex Pritchard, Nathan Broadhead, and Jack Clarke.
Along with bringing in four players over the age of 27, Sunderland also signed a group of young players who have since excelled in the Championship.
Neil then went onto win promotion with these same group of players, and the 42-year-old has admitted that the balance in his squad was ‘perfect’.
Speaking on the #EFLDebate YouTube channel, Neil said: “For youth players to progress and to flourish, you need good experienced around them. That was probably quite a healthy discussion point quite regularly.
If you were to look at them right now, I believe they lack experience. Despite their youth, these young players possess extraordinary talent. You definitely need a few dots of experience, in my opinion. I felt that my new team, which I assembled at Sunderland, had the ideal balance. We had so many young players, like Dennis Cirkin, Dan Neil, and Jack Clarke. Therefore, you can’t say that team doesn’t have a lot of young players on it. However, equally Ross Stewart, Alex Pritchard, Corry Evans, and Luke O’Nien were all as significant.
“The balance for the team was perfect, the attitude of the team in terms of appetite to win and the quality we had, it just all aligned itself with each other and we deserved to go up.”
Where have Sunderland gone wrong?
In the play-off final, Lynden Gooch, Bailey Wright, Danny Batth, Corry Evans, and Alex Pritchard were part of the team that defeated Wycombe Wanderers. Actually, Dennis Cirkin and Anthony Patterson were the only young players on the team.
Four of the Black Cats’ starting lineup members are injured, and five of them have been offloaded since then. Patterson was the only one to start their weekend loss to Southampton.
Kristjaan Speakman has slowly reduced the Sunderland squad to a bunch of young boys having a kick-about, which was a lot of fun to watch last season, but their lack of experience and leadership has become blatantly obvious when they don’t have a few veterans to look up to.
Everyone knew it was a big mistake selling Batth, and I would do anything to have him back in this team now. Especially given that someone thought it would be a smart move to only have three centre-backs in the whole squad for the second half of the campaign.
With a combination of young and experienced players, Alex Neil won us a promotion, so why did we think we could win the Championship with just half of that?
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