ARROGANCE, NARCISSISM & NEGLIGENCE: THE KLD/SPEAKMAN MODEL

I am in my mid-40s and have been an avid fan since 1984, but at the Fulham away game in the cup last year, I had a feeling unlike any I have had supporting Sunderland.

The strange feeling was basically that I was watching something absolutely sensational. The way the team played, the quality, the positivity, the tactical nous, the steeliness and mental strength, the blend of youth and experience, Chris Rigg’s fantastic cameo, the sheer brilliance of Amad and Roberts, it really was sensational.

And following on from the excellent home win against Middlesborough, it felt like it was the start of something bigger; that Sunderland was finally being run in a progressive way, built on proper foundations and truly geared towards success.

But it is now clear that Fulham was not the start of something; it was actually the end. It was the high-point of the KLD/Speakman project. Four days later the transfer window shut again with no replacement brought in for Stewart and Simms, leaving inexperienced Joe Gelhardt as our only striker for the rest of season.

Although Mowbray and the players did fantastically to finish sixth, that transfer window was the sign that the board were going to do things in their own very particular way.

A year later, we all know what that means: It means a pre-set, inflexible model based on jettisoning quality players and excellent managers and replacing them with much younger, cheaper and (nearly always) poorer ones. And it means sticking to that model come what may and suggesting that those who question it can’t possibly understand the intricacies and genius of the long-term masterplan.

It is bluff and bluster. It is arrogance rooted in narcissism. It verges on negligence. And it is all coming home to roost now, big-time.

But at the Fulham game we didn’t know that. We still had faith in KLD and Speakman. We knew they’d make mistakes like everyone does, but there was genuine belief and trust in them to keep things moving fairly quickly in the right direction.

It is virtually impossible to have that belief now. Generous supporters might be willing to give them the summer to see if trust can be restored; I wish I felt like that, but I’m really not so sure.

I now look back at the Fulham away game with sadness and quite a bit of anger. It might take years to get back to a place where we have the quality of Clarke, Roberts, Stewart, Amad, Ballard, Batth, Patterson and Neil all in the team at the same time.

Unbelievably, Fulham wasn’t the start of something beautiful, it was the end.