Sunderland v Hull City - New-look Tigers aiming for quick rebound

The man in charge has not changed, the Tigers’ embattled owners standing by coach Grant McCann, but his squad has and so, more importantly, has its culture, he claims.

Today’s League Cup first-round tie at the Stadium of Light features two teams who little more than three years ago were Premier League rivals. Sunderland, whose descent into the third tier was much more rapid, have discovered how hard it can be to shift negativity, but McCann believes he has his players “buzzing” again.

New faces have helped, ball-playing Southampton centre-back Alfie Jones yesterday joining new captain Richie Smallwood, Josh Emmanuel, Lewie Coyle (suspended today) and Greg Docherty. Academy product Jacob Greaves’s debut seems close and Sean McLoughlin can expect more involvement.

Although the admission that Leonardo Da Silva Lopes wants out shows not everything is rosy, McCann brims with pre-season optimism, targeting promotion and a cup run.

“There’s a real buzz since we’ve come back,” he says. “Everyone knows what went wrong and we want to put it right and have a good season and a run in one of the cups. We want to have an aggressive run in the EFL Trophy.

“There’s going to be a lot of games and we want a season where we’re competing for the league, playing cup games and making sure everyone enjoys it.

“Last season we were hit from pillar to post from January onwards, now we need to turn a corner, change the culture and embrace the challenges of winning.”

The introduction of former Rotherham United and Middlesbrough midfielder Smallwood – a “warrior”, McCann calls him – should help, but what about those who were part of last season’s disappointment?

The 8-0 humiliation at Wigan Athletic was less than eight weeks ago – can a culture shift really come about so quickly?

“There’s a lot of things we’ve done as a squad and a staff and the week in Edinburgh (on a pre-season training camp) was really good for us,” explains McCann. “We had some real good honest and open conversations about the things we want to address this year. We want to set goals in terms of where we see ourselves and what we can do as a team and as individuals.

“We want to make sure that around the training ground everyone is pulling their weight, on the pitch and off it.

“Bringing fresh blood, characters and leaders into the changing room will help and already has, we can see it. Now we need to come as one and see where we go at the end of the season. The aim for us is to try and bounce back at the first time of asking.

“There’s new personnel so right away it’s going to look and feel different, we just have to make sure we approach this season in a different way and have a good start.

“We want to play on the front foot, get after teams and create and score a lot of goals but we need to be strong defensively. We weren’t good enough at attacking or defensive set-plays (last season), although we were a lot stronger after lockdown.”

Six times in his Zoom press conference McCann talks about “looking forward” and he is very reluctant to be dragged back to 2019-20 but it is a part of the story that cannot be ignored.

“When your captain and your vice-captain leaves it’s difficult isn’t it?” he says when asked if the team lacked on-field leadership in the run-in. “But we didn’t want to hide behind it, we had to try and get the results to stay in the league. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen but now we’ve got an opportunity to bounce back.

“I know League One, it’s tough, it’s demanding – Saturday, Tuesday, Saturdays now for a while. It’s a real, real challenge and we have to make sure we’ve got a real robust group that can deal with these challenges.

“I think it hurt everybody when we knew we were going to go down but we all had about 10 days staying away from each other to rest and regroup.

“The boys have come back in a good state physically. Now everyone’s on the same page.

“I think that (short turnaround) will have helped. We’re only looking forward now.”

There are still transfers to be made – and not just the midfielder and striker McCann wants in.

“Leo wants to leave, he made that very clear to me at the end of the season,” admits McCann. “He’s come back in the last couple of days having been ill.

“It’s not difficult for me, really, because we’ve brought some good players in and if Leo wants to go and play somewhere else, that’s fine, but Leo’s contracted for another three years here so until a valuation comes in that the club sees fit, he will still be here.”

As for Jordy de Wijs, captain at Wigan but dropped for the subsequent matches and reportedly interesting LA Galaxy, McCann says: “Jordy’s been first-class since he’s come back.

“We gave him the captaincy for the last nine games, that’s all it was. Jordy understood that.

“He’s contracted for this year and another year’s option.”

There will be different – hopefully more pleasurable – pressures this season.

“We probably will be one of the big scalps and that comes with the territory of being a big club in this division,” acknowledges McCann. “The KCOM is going to be seen as a lovely place to come, a lovely stadium, a lovely pitch, and teams will play with a bit of freedom so we need to be really good to overcome that.

“I would have thought Sunderland would be one of the teams challenging us so it will be a good marker.”

We are about to find out how much really has changed.

Support The Yorkshire Post and become a subscriber today.

Your subscription will help us to continue to bring quality news to the people of Yorkshire. In return, you’ll see fewer ads on site, get free access to our app and receive exclusive members-only offers.

So, please - if you can - pay for our work. Just £5 per month is the starting point. If you think that which we are trying to achieve is worth more, you can pay us what you think we are worth. By doing so, you will be investing in something that is becoming increasingly rare. Independent journalism that cares less about right and left and more about right and wrong. Journalism you can trust.

Thank you

James Mitchinson