Is it time for Sunderland to take a calculated risk with their new head coach?

10/05/2024 07:00

"The search for a permanent successor to Michael Beale seems to be focusing a section of the market we should be looking at," writes Paddy Hollis.

Both the 2023/2024 season and the Mike Dodds era are over, and Sunderland's fans are now speculating as to who'll be in the home dugout at the Stadium of Light next season.

Two names have dominated the rumour mill, and alongside a third far less likely candidate, these are names you'd fully expect Sunderland of 2024 to be chasing.

First up, Will Still is a coach who's been linked with the Sunderland hot seat again.

His departure from Stade Reims, plus the fact that West Ham, who Still has previously suggested that'd love to manage, have made a managerial change of their own has fuelled speculation about him making the move to Wearside.

Still rose to prominence partly through his interest in Football Manager, but he's also got far more about him.

At Reims, he had an underdog on the brink of European football, and they were in the top six at the start of February.

He boasts a dynamic and forward-thinking approach to both coaching and the way he sets up his sides, and this style feels right for Sunderland at the moment. He's also picked up points against two of Ligue 1's big guns in PSG and Lyon, and these stats are not to be sniffed at.

Still enjoys playing with a 4-2-3-1 formation, which he could hopefully implement at Sunderland, thereby injecting more urgency and pace than we saw during large parts of last season.

The man lives and breathes football coaching, and if we intend to move beyond the previous campaign as soon as possible, someone with a clear love of football and a desire to win is just what we need.

The other frontrunner, if the rumours are to be believed, is René Marić.

The Austrian has plenty of experience as a coach at Borussia Dortmund, Leeds, and RB Salzburg, to name just a few.

His current role as manager of Bayern Munich U19's has seen him working at one of the best clubs in world football, and that level of experience isn't something that too many thirty one-year-old coaches possess.

His preferred formation of 4-3-3 is a change from what we saw at Sunderland for much of 2023/2024, meaning that he'd set us up to actually win games of football - something that's been missing on Wearside during 2024.

Marić would be in the 'risky' bracket of candidates and perhaps slightly more so than Still, but that's fine. After all, taking a punt on an unknown entity from Europe is something that other Championship clubs have tried in recent years, and often with huge success.

Daniel Farke's management career started with SV Lippstadt 08, who are currently in the fourth tier of German football.

Norwich City subsequently picked him up from Borussia Dortmund II, and he oversaw promotion to the Premier League on two separate occasions during his spell at Carrow Road.

Elsewhere, Sheffield Wednesday took an even bigger risk on Danny Röhl.

Rock bottom of the league and without a win, they appointed a man who'd never held a first team management position, but Wednesday's 2-0 win over a sorry Sunderland secured Championship survival, something that looked almost impossible at Christmas.

It's this kind of calculated risk that I feel could get Sunderland moving in the right direction, and a Still or Marić-type appointment would be something that's becoming far less surprising at this level.