Portsmouth player makes admission involving Sunderland and Lee Johnson

Portsmouth’s Aiden O’Brien has told the Sunderland Echo that he got fed up of Lee Johnson at Sunderland in the end. 

The former Millwall forward found himself gradually frozen out at the Stadium of Light by the then Sunderland manager and in the end it led to him wanting to pursue a move away from the North East outfit.

In the end he got his move to Pompey last month but certainly still feels some frustration over the way he was treated by the Black Cats earlier in the campaign.

Revealing just how bad things got for him under Johnson recently, O’Brien stated the following:

“I wasn’t starting, so why? He (Johnson) couldn’t give me a reason. It came to a stage when I was quite fed up. It took a lot out of me mentally, it was draining.”

In all O’Brien went on to score 12 goals in 65 appearances for the Black Cats before making his exit in January of this year.

He has already got off the mark for Portsmouth in his first two games for the South Coast side.

The Verdict 

O’Brien was never a player that was likely to start every week for Sunderland due to the club having better options available to them anyway.

However you can fully understand why the striker got very frustrated by the way that Johnson was treating him during his time with the club.

If you are going to leave a player out of the team, you need to at least have the courtesy to give them a reason why.

Otherwise you are not really being honest and are lacking the sort of integrity which helps to create good team cohesion and overall success in the long run – so perhaps we are now seeing why Johnson didn’t keep his job in the North East.

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