Midfielder reveals the Alex Neil criticism that has supercharged his Sunderland career
Dan Neil says criticism from former boss Alex Neil has been the key to him breathing fresh life into his Sunderland career.
Neil has been exceptional of late, with him in especially fine form in the 2-0 win over Middlesbrough last week.
He has become one of the first and most immovable names on the Sunderland teamsheet, which is in stark contrast to the situation he found himself in this time last year.
Although Dan Neil played regularly in the first half of last season, he found himself almost out of the first-team picture entirely after Alex Neil arrived as Corry Evans and Luke O’Nien formed a dependable midfield partnership.
It was assumed at the time that was due to fatigue, but Dan Neil has revealed it was actually due to Alex Neil not believing one key element of his game was good enough.
That lit a fire under the 21-year-old, and he improved it to the point that he was back in the Sunderland team for the first game of the season.
"I always go back to last year when Alex Neil came in and I got taken out of the team,” Dan Neil said. “I was taken out of the team because my defensive stuff wasn’t good enough.
"It was nothing to do with what I was doing on the ball, going forward, or technical things or anything like that. It was second balls, winning duels, stuff like that.
“I knew, going into the off season, that I had to improve on that. I focused more on that than any of the on-the-ball stuff. It made a difference.
"There was even a bit in [this] season where I was thinking, ‘My defensive side’s actually better than my attacking side now and I need to level it back out again’. I think I’m starting to do that now, and get the balance of it about right. Because I’ve worked on that defensive side, I feel as though I can do both roles. It’s almost like a mentality switch.
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“I’m not going to lie, at first I wasn’t very happy because I got taken out of the team and I felt like just as everything had gone from zero to 100 very, very fast, everything then went from 100 to zero even faster.
“I was thinking, ‘What’s going on?’ I did have chats with the old manager, Alex Neil, and he basically just told me straight. He said, ‘This is what you need to improve on if you want to play in my team’.
"Obviously, I want to play for Sunderland and he was the manager at that point, so I did want to play in his team. I had to make sure that I improved on those things.
"I probably knew that I wasn’t really going to get back in at the end of last season because we were doing so well and on such a good run, so my mind almost changed to the off season, thinking, ‘Right, what can I do to make sure that when it comes to the first game of next season, I’m on that team sheet’.”
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