O’Neill becomes latest EPL victim
Sunderland sack manager amid relegation fears and owner nerves about missing TV contract windfall next season.
The English Premier League’s biggest ever television contract doesn’t kick in until next season, but the far-reaching effects of the deal are already being seen at the bottom of England’s top division.
Sunderland became the fourth relegation-haunted club to fire their manager in barely four months when Martin O’Neill’s 15-month spell at the Stadium of Light was brought to an end late Saturday.
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Queens Park Rangers, Southampton and Reading have changed their managers since the end of November, with owners clearly nervous about the prospect of missing out on a windfall of at least $91m of TV money in each of the next three seasons.
The Premier League last year struck a mighty $4.5bn deal for domestic TV rights between 2013-16, a 70 per cent increase on the previous contract, while overseas TV income for the same period is likely to surge past $3bn.
Never has staying in the world’s most-watched league been so important, at least in financial terms.
Relegation threat
Ellis Short, Sunderland’s American owner, will hope a change in coach is the catalyst the team requires to pull clear of relegation trouble, after slipping to within a point of the bottom three with the 1-0 loss to Manchester United on Saturday.
Sunderland has been flat and tactically rigid for some time, with the typically bubbly demeanour of O’Neill – one of British football’s most popular coaches – long since gone. He has had a forlorn look for much of the season, and that has transferred onto the pitch in a string of laboured displays.
The spark of the early months of O’Neill’s tenure disappeared.
“As a whole, they’ve struggled this season,” former Sunderland player Kevin Kilbane told the BBC on Sunday.
“Now they’ve made the change and you’ve got to respect the owners for doing that, but I don’t think it’s the right decision to make.
“I think they should have continued with Martin O’Neill until the end of the season and tried to establish themselves in the Premier League, but this puts everything back up in the air again.”
The timing of Short’s decision certainly appears strange, with the Premier League having just resumed after a two-week break for international fixtures. Some have claimed it would have been better for O’Neill to have departed a fortnight ago to give the new manager time to get used to the squad.
Making the decision after a loss, albeit a disappointing one, to the champions-elect seems reactionary.
“I doubt if a manager can come in now and really change things around until the end of the season,” Kilbane said.
The agent of Steve McClaren ruled the former England manager out of the running Sunday, saying Sunderland already had a replacement lined up.
Potential line-up
British media say former Chelsea manager Roberto Di Matteo, ex-QPR boss Mark Hughes and Paolo Di Canio, who recently quit third-tier Swindon Town, are among the favourites.
Whoever does come in will have a tough fixture list to contend with, with Chelsea, Newcastle and Everton next up for Sunderland. Only four games remain after that, and worryingly many of their relegation rivals are starting to pick up points.
Wigan have begun their typical end-of-season recovery and Aston Villa have had a more resilient look to the team over the past two months.
O’Neill’s replacement will be without top scorer Steven Fletcher for the rest of the season because of injury and a backup striker in Danny Graham who hasn’t scored a goal in seven games since joining from Swansea in January.
Belgian goalkeeper Simon Mignolet has easily been Sunderland’s player of the season and his form could be the determining factor over whether the team stays up.
As for O’Neill, sacked for the first time in his managerial career, his future looks bleak.
Famed for his ability to get the best out of average players and to energise and motivate, those qualities quickly dried up at Sunderland, where his tactics were outmoded. He appears to have been left behind in an era of young, hungry managers like Brendan Rodgers, Roberto Martinez and Mauricio Pochettino and, at the age of 61, it might be the end of him at Premier League level.