What does Tony Mowbray's sacking mean for Sunderland?

Transcript

00:00 really interests me about this decision because if the stated aim is to progress this team,

00:04 then by any statistical measure that is happening under Tony Mowbray at Sunderland this season,

00:10 they've got a better xG, they've got a significantly better xG against, they're

00:13 having more touches in the opposition box, more entries into the final third, they're creating

00:17 better chances. Where we seem to have got a fracture is that almost is what's responsible

00:25 for the fact that Sunderland aren't getting the fruits of that labour. Mowbray's view is that

00:29 we've got an experienced striker who isn't ready for the championship. My suspicion is that the

00:33 reason he's gone is because that's not how the club hierarchy see it. I think that's really

00:38 interesting in terms of what happens next because everyone's seen the court, I think Mowbray's

00:43 speaking after the Millwall game essentially saying 'yeah I think we would get better results

00:47 if I just went with Pritchard and Dak up front' but he doesn't feel he can do that. So that's

00:52 a really, I hope we get the chance to put that question to the club actually at some point

00:55 because I think that's really fascinating is where they see this because by any measurement

00:59 Sunderland were improving the season, arguably with the weakest team without Ahmad and Stewart.

01:04 And so that's one of the fascinating things but again that just underlines to me that I'm sure

01:07 people already kind of understand there's a lot of cultural stuff. It's about the way that Kyrill

01:12 and Christian want to run the club, how they want things to operate behind the scenes, quite

01:17 intangible almost I think, stuff that's hard to discuss. But yeah it's about I think how they

01:22 see the club operating in the next three to five years as much as it is about how they performed

01:27 against Huddersfield if that makes sense. No it does, you mentioned there Phil about the statistics,

01:32 the xG, the xG against Sunderland having a young team, all these metrics that we can sort of

01:38 throw together and say Sunderland are improving or have improved or are a good side but have just

01:44 been lucky in terms of hitting the post and the woodwork about nine times and not having