Sunderland: Mike Dodds reacts to Kristjaan Speakman comments | OneFootball

Sunderland are searching for their new head coach, and interim boss Mike Dodds has reacted to comments from the club's sporting director, Kristjaan Speakman, about how the search is going.

Mike Dodds on Sunderland focus

Sunderland recently held one of its regular meetings with the club's supporter collective, and one of the main topics of discussion was who is going to be the new head coach. It's getting on to close to six weeks since Michael Beale was sacked and Dodds was appointed, once again, as interim to see out the season.

Speakman said, at the meeting, that the club are going to be patient with the process, in order to make the right choice, but that talks have started to take place, as per the Sunderland Echo.

Unless the right person can be found between now and the final game of the season, the 37-year-old interim head coach will hold his current position, and that is his view too. He said, via the Echo: "As far as I'm concerned, the original conversation was take the team until the end of the season, 'if we find an ideal candidate between now and then, we'll let you know.'

"I'm comfortable with whatever the outcome is. My priority is to win games of football. I'm not thinking about who the next head coach is with all due respect to that person. We need a result and we need a result really quickly. The next game and the next three games are going to be really important."

One of the other issues that was questioned at the meeting was what flexibility the new head coach would have, in terms of bringing his own personnel to be part of the backroom staff, something that Beale didn't get. The Sunderland sporting director said that whoever is brought in will have the chance to also bring an assistant with them, given they were an "appropriate," recommendation, as per the meeting minutes, via the Echo.

The interim boss, who was the assistant to Beale and Tony Mowbray, said that he was fine with Speakman's comments. "Yeah, I'm more than comfortable with it, that was the case with Mick [Beale] as well," said Dodds. "There was a conversation with Mick around bringing a member of staff in with him, but he would initially come in by himself. That was always the case with Mick. For whatever reason it just didn't happen. Nothing changed from when I took the team last time and Mick came in. Nothing has changed this time really, in terms of my position at the football club."

Speakman also added that Sunderland would be willing to pay a compensation fee to appoint someone who is currently in a job, but that this factor alone would not guarantee that it would be a perfect appointment. The club have been linked with current Sheffield Wednesday manager Danny Röhl, as per iNews.

Sunderland need to give freedom to next head coach

There have been times this season where Speakman and chairman/owner of the club Kyril Louis-Dreyfus have felt like parents of a star child athlete, trying to live vicariously through them. When it comes to recruitment, they are the ultimate dictators of who comes in, and this could well put off top candidates.

Issues between the manager and the board are ultimately what led to Mowbray's departure, according to the Northern Echo, and they need to learn from their past mistakes. Their recruitment this season hasn't been great, partly because of their youth-first strategy, although Speakman did say they're willing to broaden their horizon in the pursuit of attacking options this summer.

The two of them don't need to have such a tight stranglehold on nearly everything that goes on at the club, other than on the training ground. Allow talented coaches to do what they do best; identify talent and let them get the best out of them. The easiest way for this is to be the case is to let them bring their own people in. If you trust them enough to lead the team, then you should trust them enough that you don't have to limit their choice of assistant to an "appropriate" one.