Fan Letters: These Sunderland fans are divided over Phil Parkinson and our prospects this season

Dear Roker Report,

After the disappointment of last season, I am very focused and strangely optimistic as the new one gets closer.

I think this is because of the early transfer activity with the signings of Bailey Wright and Aiden O Brien.

Sunderland fans have been conditioned over the past few seasons to expect the club to sign players that are either cheap, or free, but they will be expected to do a job and fight for a place in the team-naturally!

The quality of the first two signings, you would hope, would set the benchmark for the rest to follow.

This would be the case if the club acknowledged, or expressed a desire to bring in Marcus Maddison.

I cannot understand how a player of his class and ability is allowed to drift past our radar, without even a comment.

The guy would be one of the best midfielders we have ever had and I go back to the Kevin Arnott days.

We have been crying out for a creative midfielder/dead ball specialist for many seasons (look what he did to us last season ).

He appears to give 100% every time he plays. Imagine the added effort when he is wearing a Sunderland shirt, the club he loves!

I feel that he would be such a dominant force in midfield and along with the other new faces, would see us promoted.

I appreciate the new very unfair salary cap is having an effect on our targets, but PLEASE try and get this deal over the line.

My wife tells me that I am wrong regularly. However, on this occasion I don’t believe I am and Kevin Phillips wants him in also!

What do you think?

David Fagg

Ed’s Note [Rich]: Cheers for writing in, David. The two senior players we’ve brought in during the current window are really encouraging, and I’m also strangely optimistic about our prospects of bringing in at least a couple more in the next couple of weeks.

Like you, I think that Marcus Maddison would be a great signing for any League 1 club - his record at this level speaks for itself. His creativity and goal-scoring has marked him out as being one of the best forward players available on a free this summer.

We would like to think that him being a local lad should count in our favour, but then he’s a professional and will likely go where the money is best.

Dear Roker Report,

I completely agree with Kev Twinn - get rid of this pathetic excuse of a football manager. He is a miserable faced total loser as a manager.

I too said from day one this appointment was the worst ever. He has totally embarrassed Sunderland AFC as a club. I am not a great lover of Paul Cook, but at least he knows about managing a football club and has some personality to go with it.

Get rid of the hapless bloke now in charge. I think MICHAEL Parkinson would have made a better manager. Yeh, everyone can disagree with me if they like but if you do just look at the final league position and the cup results last season.

Get rid now, or I reckon at least 12000 season cards will not be renewed.

Best wishes everybody. Well nearly everybody.

William Longworth

Ed’s Note [Rich]: Hi William. Let’s be crystal clear about one point to begin with; what the manager looks like means absolutely nothing, and the sooner fans stop using personal attacks to criticise footballing performance the better for all of us. It simply doesn’t help one jot.

Phil Parkinson is undoubtedly a very experienced manager who has delivered success at this level in the past. At Sunderland he inherited someone else’s squad, was hamstrung in the January transfer window and now has had a summer dominated by uncertainty over the club’s ownership and the new wage cap to deal with.

I’m not all rosy-eyed about Parky; I was there at Wycombe for his dire first game, and we hadn’t improved at all from that performance by the Boxing Day match against Bolton, but I was also there away at Bolton earlier in the season under Jack Ross when the same set of players failed miserably to beat a side that had, up to that point, lost most of their games 5-0. But he eventually got us playing at Doncaster and in the early part of 2020, and I personally think that, for a League 1 club, we’d be lucky to find anyone better in the current circumstances.

Yes, we have finished lower than we ever have been as a club. But the issues at Sunderland AFC clearly go much deeper than one team, one manager or even the current owners, and at the minute I think stability should be our guiding mantra.

Photo by Ian Horrocks/Sunderland AFC via Getty Images

Dear Roker Report,

No don’t sack him, give the bloke a chance to turn things round.

It’s all to easy to get rid of mangers. They are know different of anyone else we ALL MAKE MISTAKES, JUST LIKE PLAYERS, AND FANS

Preston Barsdell

Eds Note [Rich]: That’s short but to the point, Preston. Let’s get behind Parky and the Lads right from the off this coming season.