Fan Letters: “Chris, do yourself a favour and QUIT as Sunderland manager before it’s too late!”

Dear Roker Report,

Normally when you see ‘XXXXX XXXXX out’, you’d think “Wow, that team must’ve gone through some rough form so that the fans want him out.”

Although ‘rough form’ is an understatement to what we’re going through, my words should really say ‘Save yourself, Chris’.

I Love Sunderland. I Love Sunderland fans. I watched the Cardiff game thinking to myself: ‘if thousands of fans travelled all that way to put themselves through Hell, why shouldn’t I?’

I was lucky though - barely ten minutes into the second half, we blew ourselves up and I scarpered, unwilling to make myself angrier and let it completely ruin my weekend.

I’ve just seen it was 4-0 at the final whistle and if I’m honest, I’ve reached the sunset of my hopes that we’ll stay up. I know my team’s useless and the Owner’s useless but is the manager’s useless?

No. And that’s why I want him to leave. He doesn’t deserve this. If he felt a fraction of what we do when we watch Sunderland, he’s crazier than what I thought he was when he signed.

Now though, I don’t know what to think anymore. Various podcasts and tweets from fellow fans normally keep me sane but watching part of that pathetic (understatement) performance, I’m embarrassed to say I support them. As for the remaining transfer window? I can’t see anyone join us... our squad doesn’t want to play for us and our incompetent Chairman and CEO just laugh at us.

So, before we fall through another trapdoor - Chris, do yourself a favour and save yourself before it’s too late. Unless we get new (billionaire) owners, we’ll continue to suffer regardless.

At least the game’s out of the way...

James Rush

ed’s note: I get what you’re saying James. I’ve asked myself recently what it was about this job that made Coleman want to quit as Wales manager. There must be something. My conclusion is that he’s just a supremely confident person who feels he’s capable of creating something special here if given time, just like he did at Wales. We must remember that he stepped into the Wales job under perhaps the worst possible circumstances and his start was horrendous, but with time came success and he was able to mould the team in his own vision, which is what enabled them to do as well as they did at the 2016 European Championships. I live in hope that irregardless of relegation this season, Coleman won’t walk away from this mess and eventually he’ll get it right. It’s going to be a long slog for us fans either way.

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Dear Roker Report,

When I saw Martin Bain was in the stands watching the match at Cardiff on Saturday, I was apoplectic with rage.

I wish we could have made Bain sit in one of the supporter coaches travelling all the way back up to Sunderland so the twat can actually listen to the fans and what they have to say about our current predicament.

I bet he was on a flight back up to the North East though, paid by the club.

That’s the club, by the way, who upon his decision made a large amount of staff redundant in order to financially ‘restructure’ the club. All whilst he sits there, picking up extortionate wages. And where have these changes got us?

We’ve got no money for new players, a team that doesn’t care anymore and crowd attendances down to the lowest they’ve been since Howard Wilkinson was manager - the heart and soul has been ripped out of the club.

Ellis short - you need to leave.

Martin Bain - you need to leave.

Journeyman players - they need to leave too.

They need to listen to the fans. We are the ones who have had to put up with nearly a decade of utter sh*te on the pitch and a lack of stability.

Unfortunately I don’t think there is any light at the end of the tunnel.

I feel massively sorry for Chris Coleman - I genuinely think he is one of maybe a very small handful of people at the club who care about what is happening.

Where do we go from here? I’ve got no idea.

Chris Wiley

ed’s note: Chris, I completely sympathise with you fears mate - I think that we all do. This club is quite literally teetering on the edge of the abyss and with no clear path mapped out for how we are going to progress, and I don’t see how this situation improves. I genuinely fear relegation now, and what hurts the most is that we’ve got the right manager in place yet cannot back him with even a minor investment in order to improve the squad.

We’re about ten million quid’s worth of improvements off staying up in my opinion. I know we need a lot more than that, but if given a small amount to play with I firmly believe that Coleman will bring in the right calibre of player that we need in order to stay up.

As I sit here, mid-way through January, I think it’s fairly clear that the owner isn’t going to put his hand in his pocket to help Coleman out. Dark times indeed. We need a miracle if we’re going to stay up, one that I’m not confident that this group of players has the mentality to perform.

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