Cats boss cuts out whispering campaign

Feb 20 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

RICKY Sbragia insists it was vital he won a secretive dressing room power struggle if he was to have any hope of succeeding as Sunderland manager.

Sbragia (pictured left) took his first manager’s job with a reputation as one of football’s nice guys, but has shown a tough side as he tore into former players El-Hadji Diouf and Pascal Chimbonda for instigating a whispering campaign designed to undermine his authority following the departure of Roy Keane.

Diouf and Chimbonda were both moved on during the January transfer window and, although Sbragia did not name them yesterday, it was clear who he was referring to when he talked about bad apples who were poisoning the dressing room with their negative attitude and constant back-stabbing.

Sbragia said: “There were too many whispers and players who were unhappy and they started disrupting the dressing room.

“I want players at this club who want to go all the way and also be realistic in accepting that sometimes they might not be playing. It’s natural sometimes, but as long as it doesn’t rub off on to other people.

“I always say to them, if you’ve got an opinion, if you’re not happy about something, come and see me, don’t go and whisper to someone else, who’ll then pass it

on to somebody else and eventually come to me. I’d prefer that, rather than sitting next to his team-mate grumbling about this and that. At the bigger clubs, you don’t tend to get that.

“They get on with it, they want to win trophies, they work extremely hard. Lower down there’s more bickering, maybe more jealousy about who’s earning what, all that.

“It’s more manageable now, there aren’t seven or eight players around complaining and us working out what to do with them. The squad we’ve got now, I’m really pleased with them.

“The atmosphere round the place and downstairs is fantastic. Sometimes players will blame other players, so they haven’t got any excuse now, whoever has gone has gone and it’s up to the players at the club to get us up the table.”

Although Sbragia was not the big-name manager many expected as Keane’s replacement, he has guided the Black Cats away from the immediate threat of relegation and will take his team to Arsenal tomorrow seven points clear of the bottom three.

Sbragia would now like to see Sunderland continue to progress as he, having removed the disruptive elements from the dressing room, targets a top-10 finish in May.

He said: “I’d like to think of top 10 first.

“That’s important. We’ve got to believe it a bit more, the foundations are here. We’ve just got to be a bit more selective in the players we bring here.

“It’s been a yo-yo system in the past, Premier League and Championship, but if we can stay in, it will be a big plus and give belief to the players.”

Sbragia has already started to look at potential summer transfer targets, but he hopes to avoid the mistakes made by his predecessor.

He added: “I want people to come here and work for Sunderland Football Club and give their all for Sunderland Football Club, and want to come in and train and maybe forget the socialising side.

“There are times when you can socialise, but there are times when you’ve got to come in and train. That’s important. You’ve also got to mix with the group, the dressing room. New signings have got to be good for the dressing room. If we have a bad apple, it disrupts everything.

“I think we’ve got a good base of players here now and we have to be pernickety with who we bring in. Whether they’re big players or not, I don’t know, but they’ve got to come in and want to live in the area, that’s really important.

“It might be a different sort of player we have to bring here because of that. We’ll go and watch them four or five times but also speak to people about them, sometimes we go in blind when we bring people in. I want people who want to come in and train, not complain about this and that and forget about the football.”