SCHOOL FOR R CATS

Sunderland boss admits his untested side will be on a Champ: Stick with us... it will be a bumpy road but we

ALEX NEIL has assessed the challenge ahead for Sunderland back in the Championship – and believes they are in the most brutal and competitive league in the world.

There will be 38,000 fans in the Stadium of Light for their return to the second tier tomorrow when they face Coventry and, because of the historical stature of the club, they will be seen as contenders for the top six.

But Neil points to the parachute payment power of Norwich, Burnley and Watford, all relegated from the Premier League.

And he sees fallen giants like Blackburn, Sheffield United and Stoke, among a total of 16 sides as promotion challengers.

So no wonder the “realistic but optimistic” head coach says he genuinely does not know how Sunderland’s season will pan out. It could veer from a relegation scrap to being on the tails of the top six.

“I am not quite sure,” said Neil. “We are a team who are an unknown quality coming off the high of promotion. It will be a learning curve, three quarters of the team have not played at this level.”

In the last 15 years Sunderland have spent 10 of them in the

Premier League but only one in the Championship – the 2017-18 season – and were relegated.

Since Chris Coleman was sacked in April 2018 as the Black Cats faced the drop to the third tier, they have had four managers, out of the 18 bosses they have got through in the last 20 years.

“Ridiculous really, far too high a turnover... there needs to be a period of no chop and change and see a plan through,” said Neil.

Four campaigns in League One were painful, against a backdrop of ownership turmoil and cutbacks. Neil, whose side beat Wycombe 2-0 in the play-off final in May, said: “The club has been shrouded in negativity for such a long time.

“They feel as if they have been let down time after time. There have been different things with the ownership in the past and obviously the Netflix series – there have been a whole host of not particularly good things culminating in where we ended up.

‘But last year we took a massive step to correcting a lot of those things, and we need to try and stay on that path. It’s not going to be easy, there will be people who start doubting us. Stick with us because it’s going to be a bumpy road, but I can assure everyone that these lads and myself will work as hard as we possibly can.”

The stats suggest Sunderland will be up against it. The only team in the last four years to stay up following a League One play-off win are Blackpool.

Of the 12 promoted teams over the last four seasons, none finished higher than 15th, and five were relegated.

Neil added: “Sunderland is an illustrious club and a big name. Naturally people go, ‘That’s Sunderland, they should be there’.

But don’t take into account where we have been.

“They look at the club’s name and associate it with doing better. And that is not easy to manage. You want it to be a big club, but an element of realism. I don’t mind being judged but I want to be judged fairly.

“In the Championship you have 12-16 teams expecting to finish in the top six. That can’t work. So fans, chairman, owners are naturally frustrated because they feel they have put good money in and are not where they should be.”