Next Sunderland manager: Kristjaan Speakman explains what club wants in head coach search amid Roy Keane talks

The Black Cats parted company with Lee Johnson on Sunday and are considering multiple candidates to take over at the Stadium of Light.

Roy Keane is known to be under consideration for the role, in what would be a sensational return to management.

While he has held several coaching positions, Keane hasn’t managed a club since he left Ipswich in 2011, but would be a popular appointment on Wearside.

Speakman says the club are constantly assessing who could become their next head coach, with a succession plan in place.

The Black Cats Sporting Director told the SAFC Unfiltered podcast: “We had a really clear criteria on the type of coach we want to work for the club, what the requirements are of that individual, what we are judging them against because you need to have clarity with that member of staff.

“Naturally we are running a succession plan for that position so we have been tracking coaches for over the last year.

“That’s not because of anything under hand, any top business would be looking at who is their next Chief Executive, next head of sales, who is going to come through.

“We have internal members of staff and obviously there is a big jump into moving onto who is going to be a head coach for a club the size of Sunderland.

“We are also looking at who matches up with our style of play, who is progressing, who do we think is someone who can come in and add value to our football club.

“The natural change that you get is when the position becomes vacant, other members of the football community pop up and there are people to consider that you might not have considered because you weren’t sure if they were available.

“You are just trying to merge those two processes together and try to ensure we run the right process, which we’ve been really clear internally about how we are going to do that, to come out with the best decision.”

A range of names have also expressed their interest in the job, including former Middlesbrough boss Neil Warnock, 73, and ex-Hull manager Grant McCann, who won promotion from League One with the Tigers last season.

Sunderland’s style of play has been a key factor since the change of ownership last year, yet the primary objective is clearly to win promotion from League One.

“I think we want to be really, really detailed and thorough in investigating the individuals,” added Speakman when discussing the club’s recruitment process.

“I think naturally we exist in a very media focused environment and we are very generic terms of reference in terms of old-school manager, young and up and coming.

“They are just natural conversations and we are looking to go a couple of layers below that.

“What impact does that person have? What style of play do they have? Sometimes you can get a lot of confirmation bias in that.

“We also have a data analytics team that we want them to be able to robustly challenge the progress and make sure we have no misconceptions about what is actually on the page of the people we want to pick from.

“There’s also the human piece in terms of the connection that is going on here and how we are working and them understanding Sunderland.

“It’s not just a head coach’s job at a football club, it’s a head coach’s job at Sunderland and that’s a really defining thing that we are looking for.”

When asked who will be leading the recruitment process along with himself and owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, Speakman replied: “The process is well under way.

“We have had a little bit of a delay because of the last 24 hours of the transfer window.

“That was really, really important because from an integrity perspective and what we are as a football club, what we didn’t want to do was to pursue a search process when we still had a person in situ, I think that’s just disrespectful to the person.

“We want to make sure those conversations are had and then we can get on with the fresh direction.

“We are well under way with that and that’s a search which is led by myself in conjunction with our consecutive team, so Steve Davison and Kyril, we have members of the board who are assisting with that.

“On top of that we have our football management team at the AOL who also integrate with that because the head coach has to work as part of that team.

“We have to ensure the connection and relationships between those people are going to be effective or you are just creating a problem further down the track.”

It was announced on Wednesday that Sunderland’s Head of Individual Player Development Mike Dodds will lead an interim team to manage the senior squad as the club search for a permanent head coach.

Under-23s coach Michael Proctor will assist Dodds, along with goalkeeping coach David Preece and first-team coach Phil Jevons ahead of Saturday’s game against Doncaster Rovers at the Stadium of Light.

Sunderland will then travel to Cheltenham on Tuesday before another away game at AFC Wimbledon the following Saturday.

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