Stoke City manager Alex Neil's extraordinary 391-word answer when asked about Sunderland regrets

Alex Neil produced an in-depth 391-word response when asked if he regretted leaving Sunderland earlier this season.

Neil joined Sunderland in the January of 2021, taking over from Lee Johnson after the now-Hibernian manager was sacked following a 6-0 thrashing away to Bolton Wanderers.

The former Norwich City coach guided Sunderland into the play-offs and then to a win against Sheffield Wednesday over two legs in the semi-finals, and then a memorable 2-0 win against Wycombe Wanderers at Wembley.

Neil started the season in the Sunderland hot seat but left in controversial fashion to join Stoke City back in August, which led to the appointment of Tony Mowbray.

Speaking to the Stoke Sentinal, Neil was asked this question: The elephant in the room – or perhaps it would particularly be to outsiders – is how Sunderland have done since you left. No regrets?

"No, I'm really, really relaxed about Sunderland in terms of how well they've done. I genuinely am," Neil responded.

"Some people are quite spiteful and some people want other people to fail because it might look bad on them and all that sort of nonsense. I don't have that at all, I've never had that. My brain doesn't work that way.

"I look at Sunderland and their success – and I want to make clear it’s their success, not my success – but I do take it as a bit of a compliment to me because when you leave a club and the club falls off a cliff, in my opinion, I think you're responsible for that. You're the one that's done the bulk of that work.

"But equally, if a club goes on and it's sustainable and it does well and it's still competing, you’ve sort of helped it on its way. I've been extremely proud of my time at Sunderland. I went to a massive club who had been trying to get out that league for a long time and I managed to help it do that.

"I thought we gave them a great, solid base. We signed some really good players in the summer and I think we gave them like an excellent pre-season and we got them set up.

"However, from the point of me leaving, Tony and the players and the club and everybody there have done a remarkable job getting them for a team that has just been promoted into the play-offs and they deserve all the credit.

"I had hoped they would win the play-offs, genuinely, because I like all the lads there. I've got a lot of affinity with the people there. I know the fans weren’t best pleased with me when I left and that’s fine, I get it. But I genuinely hope the do well. I’ve got absolutely not gripes.

"If anything, it makes me even more determined to make this work because I really do believe in what we're doing here. I believe in the project that I came to try to build and I've got no regrets in because I do believe the bigger picture, not that we need to do better than Sunderland, but that I believe that I can make this work and make this a really successful club."