NEWS: Just another week in the history of Sunderland AFC

What a week it has been since last Monday when Martin typed out our previous editorial piece – which you can relive here if you wish to send yourself back seven days in the history of our club.

As for the events of our club, it all began hours after the previous editorial was published last Monday morning, when Mike Beale was sacked.

Reading Martin’s piece from last week, the sacking was perhaps inevitable, but whatever your thoughts were on the sacking it meant we had sacked two managers by the end of February and our club looked – from the outside at least – like it was a bit of a mess.

Regardless of people’s views on the events, there seemed to be a sense of relief after the decision was made and a hope that a line could be drawn under it and we could move on. But the events that followed – in terms of the potential burner social media account of the outgoing manager – then raised possible question marks over the recruitment process.

But we all had the football to save us from the events and I naively predicted on the preview podcast that the Lads would get back to it against Swansea City and three points would help to put the events – of at least the seven days – behind us. That’s not how it worked out.

Mike Dodds, taking over for a second time this season, completely changed things up from how we had set up the previous two home games, where we had scored six and collected maximum points – which backfired spectacularly.

Swansea could, and probably should, have been three or four up by half time and we were fortunate to have a chance of potentially collecting a point if we had nicked one at the end. We have to go back a good while to find a performance where the side looked so unorganised.

Despite all of this, we’re still 10th in the table and that is about par for this squad. Recent events have heightened the sense of negativity around the club, as has the fact that the play-offs now seem a step too far.

In the three years since KLD took charge of the club and installed Kristjaan Speakman to look after the affairs on the pitch, we have almost constant progression, and we’ve now hit the first point where we have taken a step back.

Calls have been made that we change things up and owners and Speakman leave – because we have hit our first bump in the road. Questions have to be asked about recruitment this year and managerial appointments, because mistakes have been made, but do we abandon everything because of the first misstep? It wouldn’t be a long term plan if we weren’t thinking long term.

Looking where we were three years ago, maybe our current position would be more palatable if this season and last were swapped around in terms of league position, that would make more sense, but it hasn’t worked out like that.

Mistakes have been made, and until they make the next appointment it all going to be about the speculation on which direction we head next – which is always fun.