North if he’s to progress – Parkinson
training eventually gets under way.
“Will is a player who has been mentioned at every single press conference since I have been at the club because of the size of the fee and the expectations when he came to the club,” Parkinson told BBC Radio Newcastle’s Total
Sport.
“He’s our player, he has to come back in pre-season and prove that he’s ready to stake a claim for a place in the team.
“I’ve spoken to him in the last week or so, he has to get his personal situation sorted out – try and get up into the area so he is not commuting up and down as much – and I really feel that is important for Will to progress forward and give himself the best chance to justify the reasons why he was brought to the club.”
Grigg was brought in to replace youngster Josh Maja who left Sunderland to join French side Bordeaux in the same transfer window.
And as the Netflix documentary because Sunderland should never have been in that position,” he said. “But it was a real eye-opener for me.
“I learned a lot. Everything in my career had been fairly rosy until that point, and then you go where you’re losing games every week and you’re not scoring goals, it does affect you.
“When you watch the Netflix documentary you see the trouble the cub was in off the pitch, but on it, it was actually a decent team.
“The off-field matters did have a part to play because there was so much uncertainty, but I would never want to use it as an excuse.
“I will never regret going there because I learned so much from the experience that is helping me now. Without going there I wouldn’t be as mentally strong as I am now.
“No fan could say something to me now that I’ve not already heard. It was a real eye-opener, but now I know how to deal with that pressure.
Sunderland ‘Til I Die showed, Sunderland owner Stewart Donald went against the advice of thenmanager Jack Ross to pay well over the odds for Grigg.
If he had hit the ground running, the fee would have soon been forgotten but instead Grigg was unable to fill Maja’s shoes, and that was one of the factors that saw Sunderland miss out on automatic promotion, with the season ultimately ending in disappointment with a play-off final defeat at Wembley.