Wigan match is a must win for Sunderland
Feb 6 2010 by Mark Douglas, The Journal
Steve Bruce has branded today’s match with Wigan a ‘must-win’. Mark Douglas hears a defiant Sunderland manager convinced he’ll get it right
“But inside there’s the same feeling whichever club you’re at – you want to succeed.
“In management in particular you always have these bad spells and I do believe you learn from it and you do become better at the job when you do experience it and come through it. You hope that you come through it anyway,” he said. “I’m still the same manager who got the club off to the best start in 30 years.
“For whatever reason in the last eight weeks it has gone a bit pear-shaped. You have to try and adapt, learn from it and learn from your mistakes and get better. Certainly here, for example, there is more attention on you.
“At Wigan it would take ten minutes to do a press conference. There’d be two or three people and it’d get lost in the North West in terms of Liverpool and Manchester United and whoever.” A dash of intrigue to a gnawing afternoon has been added by recent dealings between the two clubs, with Sunderland’s conduct during the January transfer window apparently ruffling feathers at the DW Stadium.
Bruce believed that Maynor Figueroa would be in red and white today and was shocked to read Roberto Martinez’s subsequent accusation that he tapped the player up.
The Sunderland boss is dismissive of those claims, just as he believes Whelan’s assertion that he signed poor players for Wigan is mere mischief-making.
“It’s a difficult one. We did everything we possibly could to go by the book. When someone wants one of your players and it gets out into the media it probably does unsettle your player, make no mistake. We’ve all been there. But we did try to respect them and once we heard he wasn’t for sale again, then I backed off – just like I did in the summer,” he said.
“We were given indications by the manager, Roberto, in the summer that he would be willing to sell the player in four months’ time.
“That was what I was told, that was the conversation I had with Roberto. If he cares to forget about that conversation then fine, no problem.”
