Sunderland jettison Mowbray, the stopgap who stayed too long

Tony Mowbray was a quick fix to steady a ship but ended up in the play-offs. Can his successor go one better?

The days of Sunderland having been one of English football’s longest-running soap operas is already a rapidly diminishing memory. Over the course of 11 years between 2007 and 2018, ten years in the Premier League and one in the Championship, they finished above 13th in the table just once, and that one occasion saw them finish 10th.

But since dropping into League One in 2018, the club’s fortunes have turned around, even it might not have felt like it over the time that they spent at level. Sunderland were in League One for four years, during which time they lost in the play-offs twice, missed out on a play-off place by a single point in the pandemic-curtailed 2019/20 season, and then finally got promoted through the play-offs in 2021 after beating Wycombe Wanderers 2-0 at Wembley.

And the drama continued last season, when they leapt from mid-table into the play-offs the final Championship table with a nine-game unbeaten run at the end of the season before losing to Luton Town in the semi-finals. But no matter how disappointing three play-off defeats in five years might have felt, at least supporters largely starting to see a winning team again. Over the last five years, Sunderland have lost 46 league matches. Over the two prior to those, they’d lost 49, and one of those was a 38 game season.

Tony Mowbray arrived at the Stadium of Light in the midst of yet more drama. Alex Neil had been the manager who’d finally returned the club to the Championship at the end of the 2022/23, but he suddenly jumped ship for Stoke City at the end of August, leading Mowbray to take the job.

Considering the circumstances under which Mowbray arrived at the club, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that his 15 months in the job were a success. After all, this is a club at least partly lodged in the public consciousness as the team from ‘Made in Sunderland’, the Netflix documentary which unflinchingly followed their relegation from the Championship before going back for the dessert of missing out on a quick return through the play-offs the following season. ‘Drama’ was their middle name.

It might have been easy for the wheels to fall off following Neil’s departure, and there were certainly rocky spells, not least when the team dropped to 16th place by the end of October. But getting into the play-offs in your first season back in a division is an achievement, even if you can’t find a way through them. Mowbray left with the club in 9th place in the table, just three points off the play-offs.

So, why the departure? Well, most obviously, form hasn’t been good. Sunderland have won two of their last nine matches, and successive defeats at Plymouth Aygyle and Huddersfield Town followed by a draw at Millwall was enough to tilt the balance. It has been suggested that Mowbray was only ever really intended as a stop-gap replacement, to hold the fort while a more permanent solution to get the club back into the Premier League was found.

But getting the club into that play-off spot meant that he stayed into the new season, although there were signs of the ructions to come when Telegraph Sport reported that Mowbray had warned the board that they would not be able to compete for promotion to the Premier League if they continued to focus on signing young players with potential but on relatively cheap wages, and without proven talent alongside them. Set against this background, that he would be replaced starts to feel like less of a surprise.

Who will be next? The early market leader was Will Still, most famously hired by the French club Stade de Reims, who paid his fines for him to coach them without a UEFA pro licence. He’s got one of those now, but Reims are fifth place in Ligue Un, three points behind Lille, and chasing a possible place in next year’s Champions League.

Small wonder that he would be coveted, but would he jettison all that for Sunderland? The same could be said for another object of desire Kieran McKenna, whose Ipswich Town have been earning rave reviews and who seem pretty well set for a possible second successive promotion. It seems unlikely that he’d give that up while he’s onto a good thing.

Such is the volatile nature of the Championship’s managerial record that others are available. John Eustace was the victim of new Birmingham City owners but left there with a decent record. Nathan Jones is, well, Nathan Jones. And Steven Schumacher took Plymouth Argyle up from League One at the end of last season has them in a fairly comfortable 16th place in the Championship.

But the favourite is Julian Sable, who would certainly be a left-field choice. He’s currently the assistant head coach at OGC Nice. He certainly fits the bill as the sort of “up and coming” coach who’d fit the profile that Sunderland have built for themselves under their new ownership, but he—and the same could be said for Will Still, here—doesn’t have any experience of this peculiar division with its unique challenges. Young coaches may make mistakes. They may need time. Will they get forebearance and patience at the Stadium of Light?

There’s not much history of this at the club. Whoever comes to replace Mowbray will be their tenth permanent manager in the last decade and their 20th since the start of the 21st century. But the rewards could be huge. They’re only three points off the Championship play-offs, but with second-placed Ipswich Town already eighteen points above them, getting as far as the automatic promotion places might already be the summit of ambition in the league. In January they’ll be taking on Newcastle United for the first time since their journalist-beheadin’ lovin’ rivals since the Premier League shamefully waved through their takeover by the Saudi state. Win that, and he’d be buying himself not inconsiderable goodwill among their supporters.

But as ever with the Championship, the race is not a fair one. Three of the current top four were relegated from the Premier League at the end of last season and still have the financial benefits of parachute payments. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t expectations on Wearside. No matter how chaotic the Championship can get at times, no matter how distorting the effects of parachute payments may be, and no matter how young Sunderland’s current squad may be, ninth place in the table and three points off the play-off places wasn’t good enough to keep Tony Mowbray in place. The new incumbent will need to hit the ground running.