BOSSING BLACK CATS WAS SHORT END OF THE STICK

WHEN David Moyes left Sunderland he did not take a penny – after deciding he had an “impossible job”.

Moyes is still anguished about the May day when he told Black Cats owner Ellis Short (above) and chief executive Martin Bain that he would be quitting after relegation to the Championship.

The Scot felt the club’s financial situation made it impossible to ditch the players who had taken Sunderland down and build a new team which could win promotion.

And after hearing that the club had just announced a raft of lifechanging redundancies for office staff, he refused to pursue any kind of severance package.

Moyes said: “I come from Glasgow – a place where jobs were precious when I was growing up and still are. We don’t walk out of jobs at the drop of a hat. But I felt I had to leave Sunderland as I couldn’t see any way forward.

“I had got another job offer towards the end of last season, but I turned it down because I didn’t want to leave a sinking ship and I wanted to see if I could bring the club back up.

“But the problems were too deep. When the full scale of the financial problems were explained to me I just didn’t think there was anything I could do to help.

“About 60 people in the offices were made redundant after we’d been relegated and I didn’t feel it was right for me to get a financial package. I felt I hadn’t done well enough to justify one, even though I’d been working with both hands tied behind my back.”

Moyes added: “What happened at Sunderland was the biggest disappointment of my career.

“I had three good job offers in the pipeline just over a year ago, but I was won over by how much Ellis Short wanted me at his club.

“I was naive. I should have done more due diligence on the financial set-up and the squad I inherited. There was no team spirit because there had been so many managerial changes.

“For the first time in my career, I stood on the touchline losing week in, week out. At other clubs, when we had lost, the next week there would be a reaction. At Sunderland, there was nothing.”