O’Neill A “Ray of Light” at Sunderland
Richard | Dec 06, 2011 | Comments 0
After over 12 months out of the game, Martin O’Neill has returned to Premier League management after signing a three year contract with Sunderland, the team he supported as boy.
For many and certainly for Sunderland fans, it is the perfect appointment, O’Neill has long since been recognised as one of the great football managers of recent times and has always improved the standing of any club he has been in charge of.
O’Neill probably owes a lot of his approach and management style to his playing days and his insight in to the role of a manager from his former boss at Nottingham Forest, Brian Clough. Although not a Clough like in temperament, O’Neill is a great respecter of originality and that is certainly something he will have picked up from his time at Forest.
He played a total of 285 times for Forest between 1971 and 1981 where he won the European Cup, two league Cups and a league title before moving on for spells at Manchester City, Norwich and Notts County, finally hanging up his boots in 1985.
It was while he was at the helm at Wycombe Wanderers when he first came to note as a manager with great potential. He guided the then non-league side into the football league after just two years at the them and then took them up to what is now League One in the club’s first season in the league.
He left Wycombe to manage Norwich but his stay at Carrow Road was to be a brief one as he fell out with the Norwich board over their lack of support in signing Dean Windass. He was soon back in management however, taking over at Leicester, where he really began to make a name for himself. He took Leicester to the final of three league cups, winning two of them and to a position of respectability in the Premier League and with it, a run in the UEFA Cup.
The O’Neill success story continued as after he left Leicester and took over from Kenny Dalglish at Celtic in 2000 where he began a rebirth of the green half of the Old Firm. Celtic had finished 20 points behind Rangers in the 1999-2000 season but in his first old firm game in charge, O’Neill guided Celtic to a huge 6-2 victory thus ensuring that the Celtic supporters stayed loyal to him. When at Parkhead the team claimed the much coveted treble, in his first season becoming the first manager of Celtic since Jock Stein to do so. He went on to lead them to two further league titles and two Scottish Cups plus he also took the ‘hoops’ to the UEFA Cup final in 2003 where they lost 2-3 to Jose Mourinho’s FC Porto after extra time.
Aston Villa was his next port of call and until this week’s appointment at the Stadium of Light it was his last. O’Neill of course stormed out of Villa Park in August 2010 over the lack of funds being made available to him by the board to bring in new players. It was a familiar story in the O’Neill career; he is a highly principled manager who clearly just wants to take a club as far as it can go. He believed that Villa, who had finished sixth in the league for three consecutive years under O’Neill, needed to spend to take the next step up and claim a top four Champions League spot. Those funds were not forthcoming and the club’s American owners were left searching for the next Villa manager after O’Neil resigned.
He now inherits a Sunderland team bereft it seems of confidence and who sit one place above the relegation zone. The Black Cats are woefully short of striker power having only scored 16 goals this season but their defence in fact is one of the best, with just 17 goals conceded so he does have some solid foundations on which to build at the Stadium of Light.
Whether O’Neill will have the powers to persuade the Sunderland Board to part with the cash to bring in new players during the January transfer window remains to be seen but if he gets his way, expect O’Neil to be a “ray of light” at the Stadium of Light!
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