AIDEN McGEADY has launched a withering attack on Phil Parkinson, claiming ‘it only took him ten days’ to realise the former Sunderland manager was ‘not right for the job’.

McGeady insists he did not have a major falling out with Parkinson, who banished him to the Under-23s, and says the recently-dismissed boss could not give him an adequate explanation for why he was deemed to be ‘too negative’ to be around the first-team group.

And having spent the second half of last season at Charlton Athletic after he was told he did not have a future at Sunderland, the 34-year-old has concluded he was used as a scapegoat to disguise Parkinson’s own failings.

“He couldn’t give me any examples of what I’d done wrong, any moments,” said McGeady, in an interview on the #SAFCUnfiltered podcast. “He said he’d made his decision and that was it, really.

“I was absolutely raging, obviously, but part of me thought he would get the sack soon so I’ll just hang on. Because, I don’t want to be too disrespectful, but I could tell after ten days he wasn’t the right man for the job.

“We went from Jack Ross to him, you hear what people say, about him being old school and that. We didn’t play football, we had no game-plan, we hardly even trained. It wasn’t right.

“I thought I’d outlast him, but the team went on a run. I think he almost used me as a scapegoat, to deflect and say that I was the problem.

“I’ve had to deal with everything that’s gone on in the last year, people saying things about me jumping on the back of the rumours. There was no problem between me and Phil Parkinson – that was the crazy thing and the thing I couldn’t get my head around.”

McGeady has been restored to the first-team ranks under new head coach Lee Johnson, and is pleased to have an opportunity to prove Parkinson wrong and answer the critics who questioned his commitment to Sunderland.

“It’s telling that when Jack Ross got sacked, the lads were shocked and gutted,” he added. “When he left, everyone went to see him.

“When Phil Parkinson got sacked, I didn’t hear anyone mutter a word. I didn’t hear any of that, and that tells its own story.”