‘Sunderland were a bit of a shambles, to be honest’
Lewis Morgan spent just six months at Sunderland, but it was a tumultuous period that included two Wembley finals and a narrow promotion miss.
Morgan arrived on loan from Celtic having been the key player in the St Mirren side that stormed to the ScottishChampionship title under Jack Ross.
He has since moved to the MLS to join David Beckham's Inter Miami, and has opened up on his Wearside spell in an eye-opening interview with ‘Open Goal’.
From dressing room cliques to the club' s controversialownership, the 23- year-old has given a fascinating insight into what it was like behind the scenes during one of the club' s most dramatic seasons...
'A bit of a shambles'
Morgan was asked for his reflections on his time at the club, and while on the pitch he arrived at a team in reasonable health, he did not feel that was replicated off it: "They're a massive club, but when I was there you could tell it was - not from the management or playing side-but the club was a bit of a shambles, to be honest.
"It just didn't have a good feel about it.
"When you were there, it was quite negative.
"The dressing room wasn't negative but there were groups, so it was a hard team to settle in and play well in.
"It wasn't really a good fit."
'You've got to kind of let him do what he wants'
Jack Ross took charge of a third-tier club with a wage bill that was still, remarkably, running comfortably in excess of £30 million.
By the time the season began and Morgan arrived in January, that had come down considerably after a series of high-profile departures.
Nevertheless, it remained a dressing room with huge disparities in pay and profile...
"He [Ross] was quite good,” Morgan said.
"He got most of the big earners out, as many as he could, but there were so many of them.
"When you've got boys on 40- odd grand a week in League One, you aren't going to get them out the club.
"Then obviously we had Aide nMcG ea dy. I mean, I don' t think the English boys knew how to take him.
"He's ruthless, I've never seen anyone that ruthless. He'd come in - and I think we'd drawn with Burton (Albion) or something - and he came into the changing room and said 'yous can't play in front of that? Burton Albion? Wednesday night ?1-1? You swill never play any higher than this'.
"Nobody would say anything to him. He would single someone out and everyone was scared of him.
"For the Scottish boys he was good. There were a few boys down there and I got on well with them, and he still had loads of ability. He was their best player by a mile.
"He' s got a temp er. In training if things aren’t going his way he'll boot all the balls out the drill, or just stupid things like that.
"But at that point, he's winning games by himself - so you've got to kind of let him do what he wants.
"Jack Ross was always quite good with that. He always knew when to stop him."
'Boys just didn't speak to each other'
Mc Ge adyh as subsequently been removed from the firstteam group at Sunderland by Phil Parkinson, though his future remains unresolved.
Morgan was asked whether the winger had clashed with Lee Cat t er mole, another hugely influential figure in his final year at the club.
Morgan said it was a reflectionof the' groups' in the dressing room ... "Aye, they did,” he said. "They would never even have conversations with each other, and I think that was one of the main problems at Sunderland-boys just didn' t speak to each other.
"There were wee groups of three. Geads knew Chris Maguire and Adam Matthews and they got on really well, but outside of that it was just groups.
"Cattermole, he wanted to stay at Sunderland and I think they had offered him a pay-up the season before, but he said he wanted to stay and win something with the club.
"I think they'd offered him a good pay-out to leave but he wanted to stay.
"To be fair, he' s just an intelligent player.
"If you put him in any other team he's not going to be a stand-out, but he must have done something to play at that level."
'His calf was sore'
Bryan Oviedo was one of the players from the Premier League era to stay, but while there were one or two notable contributions, he often did not play as Reece James and Denver Hume offered greater consistency.
Morgan was blunt on the Costa Rican's impact...
He said: "Oviedo would be running about the pitch, and would take off halfway through the warm-up and head inside the building sayinghis calf was sore because he couldn't be bothered training.
"Or if we had an away trip, overnights, he wouldn't go."
‘I warmed up terribly’
Morgan was not selected for the play-off final st art ingXI against Charlton Athletic, but found himself thrust into the action early on after Max Power picked up an injury. Morgan admits he wasn’t ready after the disappointment of finding out he wasn’ t playing earlier in the week…
"To be fair I warmed up terribly ,” he said.
"I did everything terrible and then two or three minutes into the game Max Power got injured and Jack Ross is like ‘are you ready to go on?’ and in my head I’m like ‘no, I’m not, I’m not ready’.
"So that’s probably my biggest regret of my time down there, it wasn’t that I did it intentionally but I just didn’t deal well with being told I wasn’t playing.
“Then the game itself, if we had won that...their first goal, the goalkeeper lets the ball go under his foot and it goes in the net.
"We wouldn’t have scored if we had played 10 games that day. It would have just papered over the cracks I think.”