WHY MARTIN O'NEILL FAILED AT SUNDERLAND

MARTIN O'Neill had a fairly frosty relationship with his mentor Brian Clough.

Clough would wind O'Neill up because he was a footballer with a hinterland that included an education.

And O'Neill would refuse to bow down to Old Big 'Ead and creep.

Yet O'Neill has quite rightly - and fairly - reflected on how Clough helped mould his views as a manager.

So it puzzles me that O'Neill did not put two and two together and realise that he was going to fail - just as Clough declined - if he repeated the one major mistake Clough made.

I am talking about how Clough was only half the manager he had been when he split with Peter Taylor, his assistant.

Similarly, O'Neill suffered at the Stadium of Light because he was without his long-time assistant, John Robertson.

Like Taylor, Robertson was an exceptional conduit between the boss and the players. And, like Clough, O'Neill struggled without the man who had his ear to the ground.

Uncanny how history sometimes has a habit of repeating itself.