O'Neill's prudent U-turn

For Wearsiders, those numbers are the heady stuff of dreams. Had O'Neill been in charge since the start of the season, they would be on their way to playing Champions League football. And, what's more, it's not as if they've been beating up on cream puffs since his arrival; in that stretch, they've faced Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and Manchester City.

Evidence that O'Neill really is a genius? Or that his predecessor, Steve Bruce, was terrible? A bit of both, perhaps? We're inevitably prone to draw sweeping generalis-ations faced with statistical evidence like the above. That can be dangerous, of course, but there are also some obvious conclusions. O'Neill's Sunderland really are a better side than they were under Bruce.

The remarkable bit is that O'Neill has done it by deviating from his modus operandi in his last job, at Aston Villa. There, he took the club up to fifth place, but he did it by burning through owner Randy Lerner's transfer budget with abandon. (Not coincidentally, the Birmingham club announced losses of £54 million last week, a fair chunk of it a legacy of O'Neill's tenure).

At Sunderland, however, he has worked to the financial restrictions you'd expect from a club already laden with debt. The January transfer window saw the arrival of two players, both on loan, former Liverpool and Rangers centre-back Sotirios Kyrgiakos and Manchester City malcontent Wayne Bridge.

Between them, they've played a grand total of 41 minutes. This suggests that O'Neill has simply done a better job with Bruce's players than Bruce did. And it should serve as food for thought for managers who come in and immediately complain that they "can't win unless they have their own players" and who demand that the owner "back them" by writing a bunch of cheques. O'Neill has had few critics over the years, though yours truly has been among them. But even those of us who questioned what looked like a scattershot, free- spending approach at Villa (like when he bought three-quarters of his starting defence in the last 72 hours of the transfer window) can only admire the job he's doing, the div-idends yielded by his back-to-basics approach and the willingness to put his reputation on the line at a club where money is tighter than ever.

Make no mistake about it, that last point is key. After walking out on Aston Villa, O'Neill sat on the sidelines for more than a year, waiting for the lawyers to sort out his payoff.

He could have then sat back and continued with his TV punditry until some starstruck owner came forward with the promise of a three- year plan and coffers of transfer funds.

Instead, he accepted Ellis Short's call even if it involved taking over a club uncomfortably close to relegation and with a shoestring budget. Much has been made about the fact that he was a Sunderland fan as a child. If you want to believe that this was a key part of his decision-making, then fine, maybe it was. But managers are, above all, professionals.

And while his love for Sunderland (which, apparently developed by listening to the radio back in Belfast as a boy) may have played a part, you're tempted to think that the desire to challenge himself was more of a factor.

All that said, the weekly grind of the Premier League is unrelenting. Last week, Sunderland were hammered 4-0 by West Brom.

Today they travel to St James' Park to take on arch-rivals Newcastle. A decent performance and normal service will resume. A heavy defeat and O'Neill will, once again, face criticism. But this is why he came back in the first place.

As motivational techniques go, saying that the competition "have a much better squad" and "cannot be compared" to your own is rather out of leftfield. Nor is it exactly textbook behaviour to say of your frustrated senior midfielder after he suggests that "something is missing" in his relationship with the manager that "I don't have to speak to him".

(This is particularly true when that player then holds your future in his hands because you don't have the courage or the Plan B to drop him. It was Frank Lampard who put the potential equaliser wide yesterday as Chelsea fell 1-0 at West Brom). But then much of Andre Villas-Boas's recent behaviour has been unusual, starting with the bizarre line-up and approach at Napoli in the Champions League 10 days ago.

Being idiosyncratic is fine, even admirable much of the time. But you need to deliver, if not results, at least some kind of forward progress, some sense that things are improving.

It's not just the fact that Chelsea, after a summer of hefty spending, have fewer points than they did at the same stage last season (a campaign which saw Carlo Ancelotti fired at the end, despite his team finishing second and having won the Double the previous year).

It's the fact that, for all the talk of rebuilding and transition, this team looks no further forward. How many of the XI who started yesterday can reasonably be expected to be part of a successful Chelsea side in two years' time?

Ramires? Yes. Juan Mata? Yes. Daniel Sturridge? Possibly, though probably not in the position Villas-Boas currently employs him. Petr Cech? Maybe, if he manages to reverse his decline. David Luiz? Again, only if he matures. That's two definites and three maybes. Throw in Branislav Ivanovic and Gary Cahill as "maybes" as well, if you like. The substance doesn't change.

Add to this the fact that, personnel aside, Chelsea don't have a clear tactical identity (and that was supposed to be Villas-Boas's forte) and it doesn't take a genius to conclude that, thus far, he has been a resounding disappointment.

Taking potshots at Lampard or Ancelotti won't help his situation. Only some kind of credible growth between now and the end of the season will.