S.A.F.C. - the future

Entitled to a trust fund of 2 billion the same as KLD

 

You would assume he would also have been left a sizable trust from from his father or his mother will have set one up for him years ago also. A Big money family this club is set to be stabilised at last. A whole different ball game to short and FPP. KLD and his family seemingly moving here. In and around the club rather than the former from a distance

 

When Kone done Toure was one...The noise that day

 

Pretty spot on piece about where we are at, feels like we're in football purgatory until we get into the championship.

 

No one has mentioned Dick yet

 

Approach the Stadium of Light from Monkwearmouth Bridge, then bend left up Hay Street to the ground.

This is the match-day route of thousands of Sunderland supporters, past the sweet stalls, burger vans and the three large signs on Hay Street’s walls from Sunderland’s recent past promoting the club.

The first is of Ji Dong-won scoring a breathless 93rd-minute winner against Manchester City on New Year’s Day 2012. It was a Premier League win. Attendance at the Stadium of Light — a few hundred shy of 41,000. The second is Niall Quinn’s famous declaration of love, how Sunderland got under his skin.

Both have contemporary resonance, reminders of where Sunderland were and the care – and successful takeover – required to push them there.

The third sign begins with a quotation from Rihanna. Yes, Rihanna.

“I love your energy, Sunderland,” she says.

The words come from the summer of 2013, when Paolo Di Canio was midway through his controversial six months as manager and Sunderland were boosting their finances and profile by hosting pop concerts in the off-season.

It is a long time since anyone said they loved Sunderland’s energy.

But it was possible to say it again on Saturday.

Lee Johnson, the ninth permanent Sunderland manager in the seven and a half years since Di Canio left, used the word “energy” when describing his players’ high-tempo first half against a Doncaster Rovers team who are above them in the League One play-off positions. Orchestrated by Aiden McGeady, Sunderland were 3-0 up by half-time thanks to a hat-trick of headers from Charlie Wyke. It finished 4-1 — another Wyke header — and all four came from McGeady crosses. It was an impressive performance.

Yet Doncaster missed two second-half penalties and, had the first gone in, the afternoon could have turned out differently. “Self-sabotage,” was the phrase Johnson used when answering a question from The Athletic last Thursday, and he repeated it afterwards on Saturday. His caution is necessary.

Following a dismal 2-1 midweek defeat at Shrewsbury Town, after which captain Max Power said “the season is on a hinge”, Saturday was a statement response from Johnson’s squad. He said he had felt “the magnitude of the club” post-Shrewsbury and he is not the first to sense that weight.

The presence of potential new owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus in Shrewsbury on Tuesday had suggested the protracted takeover is reaching a conclusion, but fans were torn, thinking simultaneously that their club are on the verge of a new era but also on the brink of a fourth straight season in the third division.

Sunderland were in seventh place after Shrewsbury, 11 points off leaders Lincoln City, promotion uncertain, and Johnson continued his “sabotage” answer on Thursday about fans’ mixed feelings, saying: “I think we’ve got to recognise that is the reality for us. The reality, and it seems like Sunderland have been doing it a long time – come down from the Premier League, expect to bounce back, get relegated from the Championship, expect to bounce back. It hasn’t happened.

“It’s definitely something I’ve noticed. I can’t put my finger on what it is. It’s almost like an element of self-sabotage sort of sets in just when you think you’ve cracked it and you’re ready to go. Something happens, sometimes it’s an injury, sometimes it’s a bad game, sometimes it’s players not being able to cope with their last good performance – you’ve set the bar now – then fail to reach the bar we set.”

For Sunderland fans of a pessimistic disposition, and who could blame them, this sounded like Niall Quinn’s “gremlin” remark from 15 years ago, and then-manager Gus Poyet’s 2014 comment: “There’s something wrong in the football club.”

It is why Saturday’s first 45 minutes were important. “I really feel like I’ve got to be a strong support to the players,” Johnson adds. “With the players, we’ve got to take that long-term view. It’s not always easy to cope with the intensity and pressure of a club like this.

“Our messaging has to come from in-to-out rather than out-to-in. We understand the passion. But nothing’s fatal, nothing’s final in football. We’ve to let our lessons be our teacher.”

As Doncaster’s substitutes warmed down behind him and Johnson spoke on the frosty fringe of the pitch to the frozen local media, upstairs in the heated corridors of the main stand, a three-man touring party was on the move. It was taking in the various banqueting rooms, the Charlie Hurley Suite and so on.

One of the three was Louis-Dreyfus.

Louis-Dreyfus, 24, was making his second appearance at a Sunderland match in five days. The boardroom had expected his takeover would receive official EFL confirmation on Friday. It was another deadline that passed, eating into supporter anticipation, but confirmation is said to be imminent, that is, this week.

Christmas Eve seems longer than seven weeks ago. That was when Louis-Dreyfus had said he had struck a deal to buy a large share in Sunderland, and while the size of his shareholding is unknown, it will be a controlling percentage. The pre-Christmas appointments of sporting director Kristjaan Speakman and Johnson himself were effectively made on Louis-Dreyfus’ watch.

“He could not be more committed to this,” said a source with knowledge of Louis-Dreyfus’ plans. “He’s made this his No 1 priority and that’s what it needs.”

The Athletic understands Louis-Dreyfus arrived in the UK late last month and served a period of COVID-19 quarantine ahead of attending the game in Shrewsbury. He has already found a new home in the north east and on Friday morning, took to Instagram to share an image of The Mackem Dictionary, a book that claims to be the “definitive guide to understanding the words of Wearside”.

He will be hands-on. In regular contact with Johnson and Speakman, Louis-Dreyfus will be involved in the appointments of a new academy manager and head of recruitment. Those are expected to come inside the next month. A heavy emphasis will also be placed upon data and analytics as plans are drawn up for what is hoped to be a transformative summer transfer window. Eighteen of the current squad are not currently under contract for 2021-22.

The Athletic has also learned that Louis-Dreyfus’ twin, Maurice, will have a role to play at Sunderland. He already has a base in the UK and could take on a director’s role at the Stadium of Light, supporting his brother.

What will discomfort fans is that the three existing shareholders, Stewart Donald, Juan Sartori and Charlie Methven, will each retain a minority stake in the club they acquired from Ellis Short in 2018, though the source added: “Fans want to know who calls the shots, totally fair enough, and that’s going to be Louis-Dreyfus. Everything else is background noise.”

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Louis-Dreyfus (far left) takes in his second Sunderland game in a week (Photo: Getty Images)
Louis-Dreyfus is no stranger to the football industry. At the time of his birth in December 1996, his father Robert was already the majority shareholder in leading French club Marseille. Mother Margarita, assumed control when widowed in 2009 before eventually selling to US businessman Frank McCourt seven years later. The family retained a five per cent stake.

Robert Louis-Dreyfus also held a shareholding in Belgian club Standard Liege but it was Marseille who commanded son Kyril’s passion. As previously reported by The Athletic, Louis-Dreyfus spent internships working at the club’s training ground and travelled extensively with the team, chaperoned by president Vincent Labrune. Educated in Geneva, Louis-Dreyfus had enough talent to spend time in the academy of Grasshoppers Zurich and then juggled his passions when attending the Leeds campus of RIASA (the Richmond International Academic & Soccer Academy) in 2017. Staff there recalled Louis-Dreyfus fondly.

“If we all play our parts, I firmly believe we can restore Sunderland AFC to the top tier of English football and I can’t wait to get started,” Louis-Dreyfus said on Christmas Eve. But in an interview in French newspaper L’Equipe published two days later, he sounded as if there had been some persuasion before excitement kicked in.

“Following the sale of OM (Marseille) I stuck to one idea: we don’t do anything in football anymore, it’s a rotten business,” Louis-Dreyfus said, “but Sunderland, this is a special project, really.

“The potential is in England. The fervour of the people is reminiscent of that of Marseille. In D3 (League One), before the health crisis, there were more spectators on average than in half of the Premier League clubs. You can’t buy this. In cities like Zurich, Monaco, nobody is interested in football, it limits the possibilities of expansion.”

New sporting director Speakman had made a similar comment earlier in December: “There’s probably not another football club in the country that’s got such a difference between where it is and where it could be. The reason I came here is because I absolutely believe this could be a top six Premier League team.”

Such claims have been heard before by the fanbase and Johnson’s awareness sees him warning of “delusions of grandeur”. Their recent experience, uncertainty over the formalities and patchy results are making supporters hesitate, more so than Louis-Dreyfus’ age. As Gareth Barker of the ‘Wise Men Say’ Sunderland podcast puts it: “We’ve got people at the club at the moment who are twice his age and don’t know what they’re doing.

“I’m not thinking ‘Right, here we go!’, because it’ll need us to get out of this division to think the journey has really started. It’s relief that the club is changing hands but, given where we are, I think it’ll be the point we get out of League One that I start to really feel excited about it.

“It’s strange on paper (a 24-year-old owning one of England’s most famous clubs), but it’s almost as though he’s going into the family business — he’s been surrounded by this all his life. He wants to buy a football club to run a football club, rather than looking to flip and sell on. He can afford to do it, too.”

On Saturday, Johnson, who is restricted legally on what he can say, added: “He’s a football man, he’s had the experience of a front-row seat with his father and his family and the management of big clubs abroad. I’m very confident that when he comes in it’ll be a very exciting period for the club.”

“Sunderland can’t have any other ambition than getting in the top two,” Speakman told the club’s official podcast last week. “I’m never going to sit in this season in any meeting and suggest for one second we should be lowering our standards to anything less than that.”

Saturday was a reassurance, therefore. It took Sunderland back into the play-off positions, but clubs below and above them have games in hand. Beating Doncaster is not enough on its own. The team are averaging 1.62 points per game and, over the course of a 46-game season, that would yield around 75 points. Leaders Lincoln are averaging two points a game.

In the last five full seasons of League One, 75 points would guarantee you a play-off place, but the lowest total for automatic promotion in those seasons was Burton Albion’s 85 in 2016. Burton, who carry a bad memory for Sunderland as the club who sent them down to the third tier three years ago, are up next in the league.

Before then, on Wednesday, there is an EFL Trophy semi-final, against Lincoln, at the Stadium of Light. Sunderland have been here before and, it could be said, it’s been a drain on attention. But Johnson wants to win, wants to go to Wembley, wants a new suit. Perhaps it could add momentum.

Sunderland need some if they are to mount a serious promotion challenge. For it to be automatic, 13 wins could be required from the remaining 19 league games.

If McGeady plays like a Group horse in a handicap, as he did against Doncaster, then there is a chance. The 34-year-old Republic of Ireland international, signed from Everton by then-manager Simon Grayson in 2017, has a splendid dryness about him but even he had a detectable anticipation.

“A year ago I was the pantomime villain,” he said. “It’s funny, you become a better player when you don’t play.”

On promotion, McGeady was asked, have Sunderland enough to challenge?

“I think if you look at the game today, yeah. We went to Lincoln (in December) and beat them 4-0, we’ve beaten Doncaster, we’ve beaten both convincingly. It’s about maintaining that consistency. Of course we can.”

And the takeover? “I think it’s exciting, yeah. Ever since I’ve been here there’s been rumours of takeovers, every two or three months there’s someone new taking over – from Ellis Short to Stewart Donald, the new young guy, Kyril. I think, hopefully, he’s got a long-term vision for the club, which is what it needs.”

If Saturday sparks a short-term surge, Sunderland’s new era has a kickstart energy.

 

Well,if he comes,his Missus isn't getting any more ****ing flowers!

 

Well done,mate!

 

Thank you. Enough to get excited about, and realistic enough to keep feet on the ground, exactly what we need.

 

FPP might of wanted a ambassador figure, but KLD might not depending how much he is going to be here. He might do as you say, but there is a lot of speculation and guess work going on from various places. Hopefully will found out his plans soon

 

I'm as guilty as anyone mate.

I've been told various things but, as I posted ages ago, he wants a right hand man at his side.

I've just no idea who that may be.

 

Whoever wrote that article must be a Sunderland supporter having a wet dream about us. It picks up on everything we want to hear. Bring it on.

 

Haway let’s get this over the line and completed, EFL are dragging their heels it seems.

 

Sounds like Bro?

 

The Athletic pieces are always really good. Get the impression that articles with them take days and days, if not weeks, to write. Carefully researched and thought through. Not just content to get clicks.

 

It is Phil Buckingham and Michael walker

 

Yep deffo worth the subscription I think enjoy reading the articles on there, hopefully there will be alot more safc ones once we start moving in the right direction

 

Whoooon it’s close. Wonder if anything’s changes on companies house yet !

 

KLD follows Lorik Cana...bring him home?

 

I'm all excited now. Damn you Sunderland