Sunderland weigh up shock move for Championship manager, but there’s one major hurdle
Sunderland are now considering a ‘shock’ move for this current Championship manager, but face one major obstacle.
Sunderland appear to be honing in on appointing their next manager, with owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus finally breaking his silence on the matter on Friday night.
The Black Cats owner posted a message on social media via the club’s X account. In which, he stated that the club was in the ‘final stages’ of the process and that they hope to hire a new manager ‘imminently’.
But who the next Sunderland manager might be remains anyone’s guess, with names coming in and out of contention seemingly every day.
Will Still looks poised to take charge of RC Lens, potentially leaving Pascal Jansen as a front-runner after it was revealed that Dave Challinor and Stephen Robinson were not in contention.
Elsewhere, former Hull City boss Liam Rosenior has now officially been linked with the Sunderland job, after journalist Michael Graham revealed that Rosenior was someone under consideration.
But Alan Nixon now believes a new name is in the running for the Sunderland job.
Sunderland consider shock swoop for QPR manager Marti Cifuentes
Nixon has now revealed on Patreon that QPR manager Marti Cifuentes is a ‘shock new name’ on Sunderland’s radar.
Former Hammarby boss Cifuentes arrived at QPR in October 2023, winning 13 of his 33 games in charge and guiding the R’s to a very steady 18th place finish in the Championship.
QPR looked dead and buried at one point, but Cifuentes turned things around, doing so in style to with his QPR side claiming wins against the likes of Leicester City, Leeds United, and Coventry City.
Nixon though adds that Cifuentes’ QPR compensation is ‘the biggest snag’; the length of Cifuentes’ QPR contract was never disclosed, and the compensation fee needed to take him from the club is not known either.
Can Sunderland realistically hire Marti Cifuentes as their next manager
Cifuentes certainly seems like a steady appointment; he worked wonders at QPR and played the kind of football that Black Cats fans would want to see.
But the timing of this link seems suspicious; Louis-Dreyfus has quite literally just revealed that the club is in the final stages of their process, so it seems unlikely that a new name would come right into the running so late on.
It also seems unlikely that Louis-Dreyfus would want to pay any kind of compensation fee for a manager, with his reluctance to appoint no.1 target Still when he was at Reims proving that.
Cifuentes’ compensation fee may differ greatly, but it still seems more likely that one of Rosenior of Jansen lands the Sunderland job this summer, with both being free agents.
That, and Nixon’s Challinor and Robinson links were quickly disproved, so this Cifuentes link should be taken with a pinch of salt.
