I want to see the fans smile again
SIMON GRAYSON ON HIS FIGHT TO TURN ROUND SUNDERLAND
70 people lost their jobs here in the last year. The players are responsible for that
SIMON GRAYSON does not strike you as the kind of bloke who would care much for advertising slogans, but he may just have coined one as manager of sunderland.
‘I want to make a good club great again,’ he said with a matter-of-fact air yesterday.
after sunderland’s recent troubles, the club may have found itself the right man to move it forward.
Grayson is as straightforward as they come in football. The 47-year- old yorkshireman was bold enough to ring predecessor David Moyes for advice when he was offered the job.
‘He said that somebody would turn sunderland around and why not me, because he said I was good at what I do,’ Grayson told Sportsmail.
Meanwhile, asked yesterday about whether the players he inherited cared as much as they ought to about the effects of relegation from the Premier League, he did not shirk it.
‘seventy people have lost their jobs from this club in the last year or so,’ he said. ‘The players are responsible for that because of their performances.
‘a very large percentage of the players here will care about that. But yeah, there will be a percentage who aren’t too bothered because they are still getting paid. and I don’t mean just at this club, I mean throughout football. This club is no different from that point of view.’
sunderland head to Carlisle in the Carabao Cup tonight with a new feel about them.hem. They lost at home to Grayson’s old club b Leeds at the weekend but had previously come through Championship games against Derby, Norwich and sheffield Wednesdayy with credit.
Grayson is cautiously sly optimistic about what at he can achieve. On a sunny day by the North East coast yesterday, he seemed emboldened, and if sunderland are to make progress it will be on the back of sound principles. ‘It’s a matter of getting the supporters to smile again and appreciate what the players are doing,’ he said.
‘This is a working- class city that appreciates hard work. There is nothing worse than a working- class bloke going to watch bad football, because it spoils his weekend.
‘Football fans are not daft. They know when people are bluffing them,, so the players who come here wwill be coming here for the right reasons, to play well and work hard. ‘They won’t be here ffor the money simply bbecause we haven’t got the same resources of other Championship clubs. ‘They will earn every penny and will work hard ffor their shirt, rather than just pick up the money and not give two monkeys about the outcome.’ Grayson was a good, hardworking footballer who won the 1997 League Cup with Leicester. He has managed Blackpool, Leeds, Huddersfield and Preston, but is yet to make the coveted step up to the Premier League. He admits he faces challenges at sunderland, most notably a multi-national dressing room containing players at opposite ends of the pay scale. ‘Do they all understand dry yorkshire humour in a foreign language?’ he asks, laughing. ‘sometimes, certainly more than they make out. But it’s a learning curve for me to get the best out of them, a test.
‘I am astonished at some of the wages here. Would I like to play now? No, I don’t think so. We got rewards but we could also go out without the scrutiny.
‘I have never been motivated by money. any decision I made was because I thought it was the right thing. It enhanced my career and not my bank balance.
‘at Leicester I won the League Cup and was player of the year, but I went to aston Villa because it was the natural next stage.
‘I didn’t get paid much more but I have always wanted to test myself and that’s why I am here now and not still at Preston, where I was happy and comfortable.
‘I have tried to make myself approachable to people here. These supporters pay our wages, so why not engage? I am a downto-earth bloke who loves his job and feels in a privileged position that I am getting paid for something that many people would love to do.
‘so when the schedule allows, we will be going into supporters’ branches to talk and have Q&as and let people know we are all in this together.
‘People care so much about their club and their city that failure hurts them. That’s why people stay loyal through generations and children are not allowed to switch clubs.
‘Players and managers all go, but supporters stay.’
AMaTTEr of weeks since he took over, the first storm of Grayson’s tenure has already blown through. Midfielder Darron Gibson’s drunken critique of team-mates including Lamine Kone, Jeremain Lens and Wahbi Khazri did not help his manager.
Grayson said: ‘I was driving home when someone called and told me. It was like, “Wow”. But has it galvanised us and got everybody closer? Possibly, and nobody took offence. There was no sulking from the lads who were caught up in what he said. There has been banter about it.
‘It’s not an incident we would want to repeat but maybe it has brought us together a little bit. and it’s done and gone now.’
Grayson will field a strong team at Carlisle tonight. ‘I have won this competition and would love to do so again,’ he said.
‘There are pictures on the walls here of players winning things and they won’t be coming down. I think Howard Wilkinson may have done that at Leeds, but I won’t. I want the reminders of the history.
‘I tell my players they can be the new batch of heroes. They should want to be the faces on these walls.’
Sunderland are away to Carlisle United tonight in the second round of the Carabao Cup, sponsored by Carabao Energy Drink.