The Chronicle

‘Views of other managers will not rattle me’

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JACK Ross insists he does not get “uptight” about opposing managers passing judgement on Sunderland as the big fish in League One.

But he insists the scale of the challenge he inherited on Wearside should not be overlooked either.

In the wake of Sunderland’s 2-0 win at Plymouth last weekend, Argyle boss Derek Adams’s postmatch comments amused and infuriated Black Cats fans in equal measure.

According to Adams, Plymouth were the better team and had double the number of opportunit­ies at goal that Sunderland had, and the Black Cats were awarded a “soft” penalty while his own side’s stronger claims had been turned down.

He felt his goalkeeper had not made a save and played “with his hands behind his back”, while Sunderland owed their win to keeper Jon McLaughlin’s man-ofthe-match performanc­e.

And he said Sunderland had to “be careful” because they wouldn’t “get it all their own way this season,” and referred to the size of the budget available to Ross compared with that of Argyle.

Ross’s post-match view was somewhat different and offered a truer reflection of the match, but a week on he shrugged off Adams’s comments.

“Every manager has their own approach to how they analyse games.

“I’m not saying mine is right and others’ are wrong, but I felt that we put on a pretty decent performanc­e at Plymouth and deserved to win,” said Ross.

“I’ve watched the game again since then and my opinion hasn’t changed.

“Every manager will have their own view but it takes more than that to rattle me.”

Sunderland will certainly have the biggest wage bill in the division this season, but not by choice they spent the summer trying to move on most of their highest earners. After back-to-back relegation­s, the club had very little money available to rebuild the squad, something Ross alluded to when he spoke of the challenges he faced after taking over in the summer.

He said: “I genuinely don’t get too uptight about what other managers think of us because I read a lot pre-match about budgets.

“Every single manager out there has their own unique challenges. I had one hell of a unique one here in the summer!

“But we’ve dealt with it.”

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