Sunderland are in advanced talks with Michael Beale and a deal to make the 43-year-old Londoner their new head coach is all but rubber-stamped. Negotiations have progressed to the point where the former QPR and Rangers manager is expected to watch Saturday’s Championship match at Bristol City from the stands. Although Mike Dodds will remain in caretaker charge today, Beale is expected to be at the helm in time for next Saturday’s home game against Coventry. His fifth fixture as Tony Mowbray’s successor is scheduled to be the Wear-Tyne derby against Newcastle at the Stadium of Light in next month’s FA Cup third round. Beale has risen to the top of a lengthy Sunderland shortlist to fill the vacancy created by Mowbray’s surprise sacking this month. Will Still, the 31-year-old Reims manager had been thought to be the preferred candidate of Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, Sunderland’s owner, but it is believed an impasse was reached concerning the need to pay the Ligue 1 club compensation. After impressing Steven Gerrard during a stint as an academy coach at Liverpool, Beale served as the former England midfielder’s first-team coach when Gerrard took charge at Rangers and subsequently followed him to Aston Villa. He first became a manager in his own right when Championship side QPR appointed him in June 2022, but left west London that November in order to return to Ibrox, this time as head coach. Beale was sacked by Rangers in October this year having made an indifferent start to the current season following the previous campaign’s second-placed finish in the Scottish Premiership. He has been coaching since turning 21 and ending a playing career which had involved stints in the junior teams at Charlton, FC Twente and assorted clubs in the US. He subsequently studied futsal in Brazil before establishing a futsal club in south London and later becoming an academy coach at Chelsea and then Liverpool. Beale will inherit a young and creative, if inexperienced, Sunderland side who go into the weekend in sixth place in the second tier. Like the popular Mowbray, who led them to last season’s playoff semi-finals, a manager believed to have also been interviewed by Stoke regarding their managerial vacancy this week, favours attractive attacking football based on slick passing and movement.