Lee Johnson wishes he had been afforded more time at Sunderland and admitted he was “gutted” to lose his job three years ago. The former Black Cats boss was in charge from December 2020 to January 2022 during extremely difficult circumstances because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now 43, he left at a time when the club were aiming for the Championship in League One and his dismissal came with the club just two points off the top of the table. His final match at the helm ended in a 6-0 thrashing at the hands of Bolton Wanderers.
Speaking on the Business of Sport podcast, the coach opened up about his time at the Stadium of Light and said he relished the pressure of managing a big club.
“I loved it," he said. "A huge club, really sort of crazy passionate fanbase and I absolutely loved my time at Sunderland.
“I was gutted when that ended, you know, I felt it was doing well. I think [Sunderland were] third in the league when I got sacked and [had] won their first cup [the Papa John’s Trophy] for 50 years at Wembley. I had the best win ratio since 1897. We’d built an amazing squad and team, and window to window, we were getting better.
“But obviously big clubs, big demand, big pressure and I think that’s the privilege – that’s how it feels. I never once felt like I couldn’t cope, didn’t want to handle it. I loved every minute of it. But I think the media scrutiny is the bit that probably is the most difficult to manage.”
He added: “Probably one of my weaknesses is my reaction to injustice and there’s a lot of injustice in football management. So you’ve got to be able to skip over that with energy and with a spring in your step at a big club like that. But I still see Sunderland fans now, they’re all over the world, all places, and I just felt like I had such good rapport with the fanbase.”
Speaking about his exit from Sunderland, Johnson added: “There were probably three or four factors that led up to that at that point in time and it accumulated with a bit of a freak result and a freak loss to Bolton away and it was, I suppose, a bit of a crescendo.
“But you can always feel it, you can sense there’s something going on in the background, or there’s a disagreement, or you’re not quite as aligned, or the communication stops, or you hear a few things.
“I knew that one was coming. It was probably coming for a couple of months, if you like, before that, but we went on a fantastic run and I think I might have even been the current reigning manager of the month when I got sacked from Sunderland. But such is life, you know. It does hurt.”
