As first weeks in a new job go, this is one that Alex Neil will not forget in a hurry.
Confirmed as Sunderland's head coach late last Friday night having already already taken his first training session, and after being pictured travelling with the team in club tracksuit, meant his welcome was overshadowed by the derision over the delayed announcement.
Then came an uninspiring 1-1 draw against relegation strugglers AFC Wimbledon, after which he gave a frank assessment of the problems with the squad he had inherited - namely the divide between young players who looked jaded after playing too many minutes, and senior men who had played too few.
And then on Tuesday an already fractious fanbase was infuriated when the club revealed the shareholder split between the ownership group, which showed that chairman Kyril Louis-Dreyfus did not own as much of the club as they had been led to believe - and, more pertinently, that Stewart Donald and Charlie Methven together still owned a substantial chunk.
The club has since clarified that Louis-Dreyfus has full control, which took some of the sting out of the situation, but fans will only truly relax once Donald and Methven have sold up and gone.
So it has been some introduction to life on Wearside, and Neil admits he has just tried to keep his head down and focus on the football, saying: "I'll be brutally honest, it hasn't been a distraction for me because I have been extremely busy.
"I'm not a big reader of what is going on outside the football side of things, because trying to fix the football is my main priority.
"However I am aware [of what's happened] because things like that do have an impact and an effect on all facets of the football club.
"I'm aware of the discontent over certain things, but it has certainly not been a priority for me this week."
And the immediate priority for Neil is simple: to reverse the decline that Sunderland have suffered since the turn of the year and put the club back in the promotion hunt - starting with his first home game in charge against MK Dons tomorrow.
As things stand automatic promotion already looks highly unlikely with leaders Rotherham already well clear and second-placed Wigan in a strong position both in terms of points on the board and with multiple games in hand, but the play-offs still offer Sunderland a realistic - if uncertain - route out of League One.
"There's pressure on every game at Sunderland to be a must-win - that's what the fans and the club demand," said the former Norwich City and Preston boss.
"We want to make an immediate impact and get results as quickly as we can, because for a club the size of Sunderland we want to get out of League One as quickly as we can.
"Our immediate priority is to win as many games as possible between now and the end of the season and see where it takes us to.
"If it means we can challenge for automatic promotion - which looks to be difficult at the moment in terms of the points - or whether we get into the play-offs, our priority is just to win."
Neil appreciates that the role of head coach at Sunderland is the most high-profile of his career and the nature of the club and the size of its fanbase means that scrutiny comes with the territory.
But he embraces that, saying: "You want to win every game and that's the same wherever you are, but the scrutiny here is magnified because we have such a huge fanbase, and I welcome that pressure - it's one of the key reasons why I came here.
"The fans live and breathe Sunderland and it's not too dissimilar to Glasgow where I grew up, so I understand the passion and the scrutiny that comes with this type of role.
"I wasn't naive when I walked into the builing - I'm an experienced manager now, and I've worked in England for the best part of eight years and I've come up against Sunderland with a couple of different clubs.
"The difficulty we have currently got is the disconnect between the stadium, the fans, the training ground, which are all Premier League level, and at the moment the team is in League One.
"That's highly unusual - it's not something you normally come up against - and that's where a lot of the challenges come from."
Neil is the fourth manager or head coach to be handed the responsibility of guiding Sunderland to promotion since the club was relegated to the third tier in 2018, following on from Jack Ross, Phil Parkinson, and Lee Johnson.
But Neil says he has did not seek the views of any of his predecessors before accepting the position, because he wanted to arrive with no preconceptions.
"I didn't talk to any previous Sunderland managers," said the 40-year-old.
"A year is a long time in football, so if I'm going to speak to people beyond that last year then the dynamics will have shifted and changed, the squad will be different, and there are a lot of people who have been recruited over the last 12 months that they won't know about.
"I think it's important as a coach or a manager to be open-minded and not walk in with any preconceptions, because naturally relationships are different.
"There might be some players who didn't get on with previous regimes, but I might find myself being really close to those players.
"I've walked in with a clean slate, a fresh outlook on everything that's here, and I'll make my own assessments of what we need to do."
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