Tony Mowbray reveals team selection disagreements at Sunderland under Kristjaan Speakman
Tony Mowbray believes he lost his job at Sunderland after disagreements over team selection with his bosses
Tony Mowbray has stated his sacking at Sunderland was probably prompted after the former head coach failed to listen to team selection advice from his bosses.
The former Middlesbrough, Celtic and West Brom manager took over from Alex Neil during the club’s first season back in the Championship and masterminded Sunderland’s top-six finish and play-off campaign with Mowbray’s Premier League dream ended by eventual promotion-winners Luton Town in the semi-final.
Despite rumours suggesting Sunderland were looking at other managerial options the following summer, Mowbray remained at the Academy of Light and took the team into the new season. However, after 15 months in charge, Mowbray was sacked, with the Black Cats ninth in the Championship.
Mowbray would then take over at Birmingham City before having to leave his role after receiving a bowel cancer diagnosis. The former defender is now on the mend and has made several appearances in recent weeks: one on BBC Radio Tees to cover his boyhood club Middlesbrough and one at a talk-in at Sunderland with BBC Radio Newcastle commentator Nick Barnes.
During an interview with Barnes, which aired on BBC Radio Newcastle’s Total Sport show on Monday, November 18, Mowbray strongly suggested that he believed the end at Sunderland came for him because of team selection differences with owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and sporting director Kristjaan Speakman.
“I think Sunderland’s a club with a model,” Mowbray told Barnes. “The owner wants to do it the way he wants to do it and that’s fine. If anything, it was the first time I’d really worked under a sporting director and it was interesting. Some of it was really good and it was the first time really I’d had conversations about the team and about players.
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