Steven Pienaar believes David Moyes will put things right at Sunderland but has warned Wearsiders it may take some time to alter the club’s negative mindset and the season may well be difficult.
“David is definitely the man to get it right,” said the former Everton midfielder who was contemplating retirement in his native South Africa before accepting his former manager’s offer of a one-year contract at the Stadium of Light.
Moyes, who succeeded Sam Allardyce in July, feels Pienaar can offer a very young, injury-hit and somewhat slender Sunderland squad invaluable experience, and the respect forged during the pair’s Goodison Park days is mutual.
“You can’t forget he’s only come into Sunderland in the middle of pre-season,” said Pienaar, who is not overly concerned by his new team having lost both Premier League games and struggling to overcome League One Shrewsbury 1-0 in the League Cup on Wednesday. “He’s still getting used to the players here and he’s got a lot of young players but he will definitely build a solid foundation. He’s definitely a safe pair of hands. And, at Everton, he often tended to start seasons slowly but finish strongly.”
The 34-year-old – currently having to fill an unusually defensive central-midfield role – suggested Moyes’s biggest challenge will be to alter a debilitating collective mentality at a club involved in many relegation scraps over recent years. “We have to try to push away from that mentality of only just avoiding relegation every season,” Pienaar said. “That’s a big problem here at the moment. We have to kick on.
“The manager wants to instil confidence in the players, and he wants the players to just go out and enjoy their football. At the moment there are a lot of young players so it will be hard, it might even be a hard season but we will make progress. There are quite a few good young players here – Duncan Watmore, Joel Asoro, Lynden Gooch and Jordan Pickford to name a few – but they need guidance on the pitch.”
That is where Pienaar comes in and he is still adjusting to the elder-statesman role. “It feels quite strange to be playing with someone who is half my age like Joel Asoro,” he said. “I feel like a dad to some of them – and already I’m one of the senior players, even though I’m new and still getting to know everyone.”
Not that he has any regrets about saying “yes” to Moyes. “I thought my Premier League career was over,” said Pienaar who was released by Everton in June. “When I was back home in South Africa I thought that could be it for me so when the opportunity came up to come back, it was great and exciting. I didn’t play a lot of games last season so it’s about getting back to the level I know I can play at. That will come with playing games. At the moment, though, I’m struggling towards the end of them, getting tired.”
Once he is fully fit again Pienaar hopes he can help Moyes achieve his ambition of turning Sunderland into a latter-day version of Everton. “I’ve had good years and also bad years with David, there’s been times when he’s got stuck into us,” he said. “But, overall, I’ve great memories of working with him and what he instilled in me as a player. Those years with him at Everton were terrific.”
Javier Manquillo has become Sunderland’s sixth summer signing after completing a season-long loan move from Atlético Madrid which offers them club an option to secure a four-year deal for the 22-year-old former Liverpool right-back next summer.
Manquillo, who spent last season on loan at Marseille, follows Papy Djilobodji, Adnan Januzaj, Donald Love, Paddy McNair and Pienaar to Sunderland.
Moyes views the full-back’s arrival as an important step in rebuilding a squad disrupted by Younes Kaboul’s move to Watford, Lamine Kone’s desire to depart for Everton and the loss of last season’s influential loanees Yann M’Vila and DeAndre Yedlin.
