Kristjaan Speakman has acknowledged that Sunderland need to communicate better with their supporters after the protracted search for a new head coach.
The club’s sporting director has also hinted that the club are on the brink of announcing some significant new contracts after the first-team group officially began pre-season training on Monday.
Speakman spoke to club media on Monday and accepted that the club had fallen short in the second half of last season, which preceded a search of over 100 days for Michael Beale’s permanent replacement. It was a challenging time for supporters as the summer began with little meaningful update, and Speakman says the second half of the campaign will be used as motivation moving forward.
“We’re really excited to be back,” Speakman said. “With Regis, we’ve got a really thoughtful, diligent and detailed coach – tactically really astute. Everything he’ll be doing will be geared towards developing the group, the team, individuals and winning games.
“Acquiring a head coach is always a complex process but it would be remiss of us not to admit that our comms wasn’t great over the summer. That wasn’t intention, the plan was to go out early with information, that became difficult with how the process went. Even when Kyril made that statement in June, it was weeks before we we able to concluded the deal and announce Regis. We’ll certainly try to improve that and we really the patience [of the fans].
