Lee Cattermole could be found consorting with the enemy last weekend but no one should doubt the midfielder’s determination to keep Sunderland in the Premier League. When John Carver not only found himself staying at the same luxury Scottish golf resort as Cattermole but occupying an adjacent lodge, Newcastle United’s head coach was confronted by arguably the biggest stumbling block to his hopes of winning Sunday’s Wear-Tyne derby at the Stadium of Light.
“If Lee’s getting on the ball and dictating things, then it will be a problem for us,” says Carver, who is desperate to end Sunderland’s sequence of four straight derby wins but fears Dick Advocaat’s replacement of Gus Poyet last month may toughen Newcastle’s task. “Lee’s clash with Moussa Sissoko will be massive, it will be a key head-to-head battle,” he says. “If Moussa’s getting on the ball and dominating Lee then it will be big for us.”
Cattermole’s recent absence, due to a combination of injury and suspension, partly explains why Sunderland have won only one of their previous 13 Premier League games and scored just once in the last six matches. Should he help undo Newcastle, the man Advocaat has dubbed “our controller” will confirm the impression that he is the only Sunderland player rival clubs are likely to be queuing up to purchase this summer. As befits his Tyneside roots, Carver has little love for Sunderland – but plenty of time for their outstanding individual. “I get on quite well with Lee, believe it or not,” he says. “I had a little chat with him when I saw him last weekend. It was the international break and we were up at Archerfield. Myself and Steve Stone [Carver’s assistant] were up there with some friends and he was with some of his friends in the lodge opposite so we had a chat.”
Carver pointed out that Cattermole received his 10th yellow card of the season against Hull, meaning that his two-game suspension was served before the derby. Carver said: “That shows how much the derby means to him.”
Ellis Short, Sunderland’s owner, can only hope Sunday’s match is similarly important to some of his other, rather more expensively assembled players as he perhaps wonders how on earth it has come to this. On paper his club should be comfortably mid-table. Few rivals can match the magnificently appointed near 50,000-capacity Stadium of Light, let alone boast crowds which have averaged almost 43,000 this season.
Off the pitch so much feels right about Sunderland. There is the bold overseas marketing strategy focusing largely on combining merchandising initiatives with laudable, and pioneering, community work in Africa. Closer to home, club executives are pressing ahead with plans to build the “Beacon of Light”, a charitable sporting and educational facility for disadvantaged young people on Wearside.
In a world still dominated by middle-aged men in grey suits, the chief executive, Margaret Byrne, is a bright young lawyer. She works alongside Lee Congerton, the sporting director and a much coveted recruitment specialist equipped with an enviable contacts book.
So far, so promising but there is a significant disconnect. Despite the plethora of encouraging indicators, not to mention Short’s genuine familiarity with Sunderland’s history and apparently inexhaustible enthusiasm for attempting to get things right, the core product – the team – remains startlingly sub-standard.
Perhaps the most damning indictment is that no academy player has broken into the first XI since Jordan Henderson and Jack Colback. While Henderson is now at Liverpool, Colback will be one of the first names on Carver’s team-sheet.
If there are definite signs that, a year into the job, Congerton, a former Chelsea chief scout and Hamburg technical director, is starting to put things right, the fear is that past mistakes may have to be corrected in the Championship.
The hope of avoiding that doomsday scenario prompted Advocaat’s installation, making the much-travelled former Holland coach the fourth manager in two years at a club whose latest accounts reveal a £17m loss. Even worse, a £144m investment in a bewildering array of players since 2007 and the creation of a wage bill higher than Everton’s has merely prompted a series of relegation battles. Small wonder Short, a billionaire financier who has pumped around £130m into Sunderland since assuming full control in 2009, is anxious not to miss out on the Premier League’s gargantuan new television deal .
If a combination of parachute payments and the 40% wage reduction clauses understood to be written into most player contracts in the event of relegation might soften the blow of Championship football, Sunderland could still expect to find themselves worse off by around £50m a year.
This, alarmingly real, prospect is a direct consequence of bad managerial appointments allied to poor signings. Adam Johnson (currently on police bail following allegations of sexual activity with a 15-year-old girl), Jack Rodwell, Steven Fletcher and Connor Wickham cost a collective £40m but have produced relatively little in return. Meanwhile Congerton’s predecessor, the former agent Roberto De Fanti has much to answer for.
Advocaat’s challenge is to make the best of a bad job. “We have to improve and the players know that,” he says. “We have to realise there’s not too much time.”
