S.A.F.C. - the future

I don't bother with those idiots over the road anymore. Think I let slip a big FU to Johnson yday after I was told he referred to me 6 times in 2 days giving me **** when I was not even involved in the convo

 

Its an interesting delay considering they are clearly hiring people and actively involved already. Anyone got any ideas why the delay?

 

I was told that Donald was gonna sell his shares and only keep 10% but since the rich kid has come on board, he wants to keep 15% now

 

Aye, but imagine the damage he could do with that 15% as a minority shareholder.

 

Big ask getting under 21s in to get you promoted though.

 

aye, you win nowt with kids. allegedly.

 

In principal it's a nice idea but i can't really see us just paying players off. It's a big ask getting under 21s in to get you promoted inside 6 months.

 

Not the point I was making but ok.

 

Impossible to be worse than we have

 

imagine if we don't get him out soon and he accepts the £375k, leaving us unable to sign anyone in January. Cos that would be real damage, and typical of the little fat ****er.

 

Brilliant

 

Better late than never!

The fact Sunderland are looking to appoint their 18th manager since the turn of the century is a shuddering statistic, which not only shows how many mistakes have been made in filling the position, but also the wider malaise at a club that has lurched from failure to farcical for the best part of a decade.

Yet, even while you digest the ramifications of the relentless turnover of managers - the short term thinking, the colossal costs incurred of hiring and firing head coaches and their backroom staff and the shameful waste of money that saw the Black Cats spend a decade in the Premier League and leave it with only one top ten finish and crippling debts to show for it, we must move swiftly on to the next unpalatable course.

As hard as things have been, as embarrassing and humiliating as those back-to-back relegations were, falling out of the Premier League and through the Championship in the space of 12 months as their ten-year survival battle in the top flight morphed into a far more devastating decline, they have never been as bad as this.

Football is full of hard luck stories, expectations at odds with achievements, disgruntled supporters, of clubs run badly by negligent, cruel or plain crooked owners.

Almost every club in England remembers the low point in their history, when things were so bad that the very future of the institution appeared to hang in the balance.

Supporters either wear them like a barbed wire vest if lived through them, or they are told about the pain and suffering in gory detail by those who did.

In many respects, the bad times are just as important in defining a football club and its supporters as the glory days. For some, the lows are actually far more important in shaping perceptions of what fandom means because, for many, what constitutes success for any particular club can only be measured when compared to what failure felt and looked like.

Sunderland supporters are living their lowest moment right now. This is it. It has never been worse than this. That’s not melodramatic, it is fact.

Sunderland are enduring their third season in League One. They had only played one season in the third tier of English football before relegation from the Championship in 2017.

Phil Parkinson, who was sacked on Sunday night after just 13 months in the job, is the second manager, after Jack Ross, to have failed to win the promotion expected from him when he was offered the job. But that is not all that is rotten or wrong on Wearside.

With the current owner Stewart Donald, who bought the club from Ellis Short, partially using its own Premier League relegation parachute payments to fund the takeover three years ago and now desperate to sell, Sunderland currently do not only have a first team manager, a chairman, a head of recruitment, an Academy manager or an Under 18 manager.

Without fans inside the Stadium of Light on a matchday, they are the footballing equivalent of a Ghost Ship, floating around aimlessly, with no direction, no plan and no idea where they will end up. The worry is they could sink further.

Parkinson was sacked with Sunderland sitting eighth in the table, with a game in hand over sixth placed Ipswich Town and seven point adrift of leaders Hull City. They are still in the promotion hunt but faith in Parkinson, an unpopular manager when he was appointed in October last year, had evaporated weeks ago.

Who made the decision to sack him remains a little confusing. In the midst of a takeover by current board member Juan Sartori and the French billionaire heir Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, whose father used to own Marseille, it was reportedly chief executive Jim Rodwell who sacked Parkinson.

Supporters, though, are being led to believe that the new owners were in full agreement and the takeover will be completed in a matter of days.

The problem is, Sunderland have had new owners before and already know that the widely resented Donald, who talked a good game but consistently failed to back it up with deeds or the level of investment expected, and his business partner, the former Telegraph journalist Charlie Methven, will maintain stakes in the club at 15 per cent and 5 per cent respectively.

It is certainly not a case of out with the old and in with the new. More keeping the old and adding some new. That is bound to raise questions, if and when, the takeover is confirmed. Who will be in charge? What is the plan? Why will things be any different to what they are now when so many of the same people remain?

Sartori, a Uruguayan businessman, whose personal wealth is unclear, has been part of the current regime for several years. So, it is the arrival of the 23-year-old Dreyfus that causes a flicker of excitement given the wealth reportedly at his disposal. But it is his family’s money, not necessarily his that has been reported.

The family also have a minority share in the Belgium club Standard Liege, so is this seen an investment opportunity – the idea being to sell the club on as Donald intended when they are in the Championship or better still the Premier League - or a full takeover with full control of the day to day running of the club attached and the financial backing to bring about two promotions in quick succession?

There remains a level of cynicism that is perhaps inevitable in a fanbase that is used to being let down, betrayed and, ultimately, ignored.

Whatever happens next, Sunderland should not be where they are. They have suffered enough. It should not take much for a club of its size, with its resources – particularly when fans return to the stadium – to get out of League One. It is a disgrace they are still there now. That they are is largely down to Donald, Methven and Sartori, at least in the eyes of weary supporters.

Sunderland are looking for a new manager again, but they need new leadership on and off the pitch. This time, whoever takes charge, needs to get it right.

 

I haven’t got my head round how they are even footballers to be honest

 

That was my personal favourite. I can't remember which of the muppets came up with this Christmas cracker, but I'm sure it's had lawyers across the country assessing MoUs and SAs all week.

 

I’m hoping it’s purely for the financial gain only.
Surly he can’t mess this one up

 

genuinely not sure what damage he could do with such a small share holding. In essence the guy is an irrelevance to the football club now..just waiting for a pay day, i'd think he will only check on our scores with the motive of seeing he 15% becoming a little more financially worth cashing in

 

Pretty good article tbh - can't really argue with it

 

If I'm a young billionaire club owner chomping at the bit to get going, I've got a top notch striker lined up, picked by my crack team of scouts and approved by the manager as a great long term signing, and the only obstacle is having to pay up Danny Graham's contract...why wouldn't I?

 

What would be the pay off? I would contribute to get rid of the useless tw*t.

 

Still doesn't excuse him being a knob mate