Article: Success at all costs or our club | Football, Sunderland

Man Cities latest purchase and commo’s thread on their madness reignited a though that first came to my mind when the Chelsea buying spree started.

In Ellis Short we have a billionaire owner who has splashed the cash but is not in the same league as the multi billionaires of Chelsea and City. Our exotic sinnings are Gyan and Sess.

Football today is far removed from the fan, that local identity with players is hard to maintain but many clubs still have some, Sunderland and Newcastle I would say both retain a strong local identity, the clubs more than the players.

Its fair to say that neither team have exactly set the footballing world alight over the last god knows how many years.

I suspect we all dream of that oil rich sheik knocking on our clubs door and us seeing the 200,000k a week player in our teams colours, or do we?

Do you want success at all costs, a team that challenges for every prize, the worlds best players to enjoy every week at your club, sounds appealing, but is it?

Or do you want to retain some of the your club identity with the Cattermoles, Colbacks, Gardners, Bartons, Taylors, players who will move on if the deal is right but who we can at least have some connection with.

Maybe its an age thing but I still like the traditional my club feel, maybe that’s why we have under achieved for so long, what do you think?

 

I'd love a mega rich Sheikh to inject zillions into our club. I am looking at Man City with a bit of jealousy.

 

Love the sucess, but in all honestly i'd love it to be achieved in the mould of say Man Utd. Yes they buy big, but SAF has moulded and created teams, and bought quality to compliment them.

Where-as Citeh now and Chelsea previously, basically just bought a team

City have won how much in previous years? so all this big money has to pay off, and there is only one team that can win the league, one that can win the cup and so on, so it's an expensive gamble.

Local legends don't come around to often, hence the reason i was gutted at the loss of young Jordan, identity with your club, not a game being played out by over paid prima donna mercenaries.

 

All very dewy eyed lads but, it's all about the money now and not the local identity. How many local lads are in our team now?
The barcodes tried unsuccessfully a few years ago trying to get a team full of local lads and couldn't do it. Owners, players and managers come and go the only constant in any team not just ours are the fans.

 

The article brings up all my concerns. On one side I want success at all costs - because its my team, because of the good it would do for our region. The other side is the distance between us and the club. It will widen.

But hey. It's happening already We buy players from all over the world. Some wont even know we play in red and white stripes. Others wont know about the time we WERE the kings.

Sad but true, innit?

Love my club, but lets be honest, we are losing her anyway.

x

 

I can honestly say that supporting SAFC is the best place to be.

If you are say a Man U supporter you realistically expect to win every game and are pissed off even at a draw. Same with the likes of Barcelona.
With us it's much more exciting.
We can sometimes pull off great results (Leeds/'73 or Chelsea away last year for example) and they mean much more.

We are a Premier top ten team and are capable of beating anyone in the league but so are most other Premier teams. What must be boring is expecting to win all the time and getting right hacked off if it doesn't happen.

Suppose we were playing the likes of Port Vale, Exeter or Torquay each week, we would expect to win and would think 'If we can't beat that lot we must be crap'
Is that how Man U fans feel?
If so it must be boring.

Being a Sunderland fan is exciting, going from manic highs to depressing lows (105 points against 15 points seasons) but boring? never.

Any success we get is hard fought for and therefore better savoured.

Would you really like some Arab to do a Man City on us?
I don't think we're that sort of club.
Ellis and Niall are our sort of people not the Glazers type.

So then, good or bad I reckon we're blessed with SAFC.

 

Agree, well said

 

Me, I'm quite happy with the way the club is being run. Sensible owner, chairman and manager. Over the past few years now we have seen steady progress with the odd 'blip' along the way but that's only to be expected. If this can continue for another 4 or 5 years and we consolidate our position within the premiership top ten then who knows where it could end up. We already have a wealthy owner, but not an interfering one that wants to buy outright success, he wants to earn it through hard work and sensible financial play.

How you judge 'success' is up to you and it will have different meanings for different supporters but to me, we have been successful recently, fair enough we haven't set the world alight and won trophies but that could be not in the too distant future and I feel optimistic!

I'm not sure how I'd feel if a super-rich tycoon type came in and bought world class players left, right and centre, to be honest, somewhere along the line I'm sure it would still feel like 'our' SAFC but for now, can't complain about the set-up!

 

My worry about all these multi billionaires buying clubs is that they clearly see this as a hobbie and what if they get bored and pull all the money out the club and this will leave not only that club but english football in loads of **** (which is a scary thought). However, this i presume will never happen due to the success of football and another tycoon will more than likely come along and snap the club up.

With regards to local identity and people all praying for the next local superstar to come through,yes this would be nice but i sometime get the feeling that were the player comes from sometimes comes before his ability. Jordan Henderson had/has potentital but i honestly think there was better players been kept out of the squad because of him and not a cat in hells chance he was worth 20 mil. If maybe henderson wasnt the 1st name on the team sheet every week, we still may have bolo out our disposal.

Jack Colback is another player people constantly rave about on these boards. He did well in the handful of games he played but in all honesty i wouldnt put him before Gardner or Cattermole on my team sheet (at this moment in time anyway).

Back to the point of the article though i think local identity will shine through from the working class fan as opposed to suits sitting in the stands. Whilst we still have a chairman like Quinny who understands the passion of the area we will keep our identity regardless of the owner. However, if Ellis Short ever decided to remove Niall and put a random yank in charge then thats when i think things would start going down hill for ourselves. But at the moment im more than satisfied how the club is being run.

Apologies for the waffle,lol.

 

very good waffle IMHO

 

I'm kind of caught in between both mind sets to be honest.

After 36 years of watching a lot of ****e football (maybe 9 or 10 of those 36 were actually good ones), I'd like to see us invest on a Man City scale and bring in the very best players and see us WIN something. We couldn’t even beat Swindon or Charlton in a Wembley play off and lost to Norwich City in a cup final. Oh, and lets not forget we couldn’t even beat bloody Millwall in a semi final to actually get there. I'm a bit fed up of just accepting second rate stuff decade after decade. I'd like a bit of the cream for a change.

Having said that, there is something of the farce about Man City at the minute and they are a bit of a joke club as well as being the richest. They are like Euro lottery roll over winners just buying stuff cos they can, without the thought behind it as to why. However, they are going to win the EPL soon and that’s a fact. They have too much money behind them not to so will any City fan give a **** if they spend 1bn doing so? No. Will they care longer term that they are a despised club around the country? Maybe?

So, yes I do want better than a cup every 40 years, as that is not as some have suggested exciting, it’s absolutely crap IMO but no, I don’t want us to become a laughing stock in the process and detested as a club by everyone else. A local presence would be great but when we had the chance we sold ours so why crave after that? Will it make us successful more than bought 'foreign' imports? There were only 4 local players in the team that last won a trophy for Sunderland so maybe not.

Maybe Short, SNQ and Bruce are going about things in a methodical and structured way but I just hope they can deliver a piece of Silverware in the process, although it should be remembered that in doing so, Pompey & Birmingham didn’t exactly benefit very long after winning one? A lesson I think about over stretching, that all clubs can think about

 

the sort of confusion many of us share cest

 

Id say somewhere inbetween. With all that wealth and lavish spending comes.wide spread hatred. I like what's happening at city in that they are putting money into the community and surrounding area. I can defend the city of sunderland till I'm blue in the face but there's things that are an absolute disgrace. The Vaux site makes me sick when I walk past it, such a great piece of land sitting there wasting. It could use a wealthy sheik to sprinkle some cash. Whilst all our tax seems to go to the other city in the n.e. is sunderand council ran by alan shearer and fat freddy?

 

Brilliant piece Syd, and brilliant contributions from PMP, Cest and Charley Farley as well.

In simple terms, i wouldn't care how we got there, to see my club lift a trophy or in the Champions League, i don't care if we stole the players.

It's a wonderful thought that a team of local lads could compete, but look at the club that has this policy, Atletic Club de Bilbao, historically successful, now also rans, despite having sensational players like Llorente & Muniain.

Money is the only way now, and that's a shame, but a reality.

 

This.

 

Maybe days like these are few and far between now..

http://www.talksport.co.uk/magazine...englands-top-ten-unfashionable-european-clubs

 

These clubs splash the cash, but all it's doing is increasing their debt. (the money isn't donated as a gift)
When the tap runs dry for whatever reason, no one is able to buy the club as the debt is too high,
then the club goes under ... look at Pompey.

It's fine whilst a club like Chelsea or Man City can finance the debt or at least gets extra donations to pay the debt interest , and thereby increase the debt.
What is the debt for Man U ? - almost a 700 million pounds if I recall right. Yes 700 million! How on earth is that ever going to be paid back?

Chelski - when the Russian Oil Baron gets a new hobby, what then?

No. I'll stick to our beloved red and white stripes thank you.

 

I agree with you Sid 100%.

To watch your club win a trophy will stay with you forever but if it's 'bought' I'd have a suspicion that somewhere in the back of my mind that it wasn't won correctly and would detract from the joys of nostalgia when looking back.

To that extent; I really can't see Newcastle winning a trophy for yet more decades

 

but if you look at Newcastle last season they did not have the quality of city but who had the most heart. Heart wont win you the prem but it could win you a cup