Kristjaan Speakman admits one element of appointing Michael Beale at Sunderland was ‘overlooked’
Sunderland Director of Football Kristjaan Speakman has opened up on the errors involved in appointing MIchael Beale.
Sunderland are in the midst of the second international break of the 2024/25 Championship campaign, where they currently sit at the summit of the league table.
It has simply been a brilliant start to Regis Le Bris’ tenure, with the club in Wearside notching an incredible 19 points in just nine games, and there doesn’t seem to be any signs of slowing down.
Whilst players such as Chris Rigg, Jobe Bellingham and Romaine Mundle have been at the epicentre of such a brilliant start to the campaign, much of the praise up until this point must be laid at the feet of the new French boss, who has successfully overseen such drastic changes towards the squad.
The twilight of the 2023/24 season showed a disheartened and confidence-shot side under Mike Dodds, which was previously left in the mire by Michael Beale.
Whilst Sunderland and Kristjaan Speakman have done well to turn it around since the poor 2023/24 campaign, the Black Cats’ Director of Football still gets questioned over his decision to bring in the former Rangers and QPR boss to this day.
Sunderland’s Kristjaan Speakman admits what he got wrong in Michael Beale appointment
When Beale was brought in for Tony Mowbray, it certainly raised a lot of eyebrows, especially with Sunderland still comfortably sitting in-and-around the play-offs when the trigger was pulled by Speakman.
What followed was a Sunderland side lose all sense of identity and plummet down the table, and the fans without a doubt pointed the blame towards the new coach and Speakman.
Per the Second Tier Podcast on X, Speakman has been questioned over his decisions surrounding the previous coach switch up, where he said: “At the time, we felt we made the right decision to change the coach to seek to try and improve some of the areas we wanted to improve.
“There’s so many variables that go into a coach change and a coach’s success, and some of the things went against us on that change.
“I don’t think we should say we go back and say we shouldn’t have done it, we made it for the right reasons, the outcome was the outcome we wanted to be.
“There were some really good things that happened behind the scenes under that coach’s tenure, but ultimately we weren’t able to get the results on the pitch.
