CATS NOT FOR SALE...BUT MAKE ME A CREDIBLE OFFER
YES...I AM WATCHING AND I CARE
ELLIS Short has responded to Sunderland fans’ questioning his commitment to the club by insisting “yes, I’m watching”.
As the club slid towards relegation from the Premier League last term, supporters regularly sang “are you watching, Ellis Short?”, as their team imploded on the pitch.
And the anger has continued this season with the Black Cats now fighting against relegation to League One.
Short has relocated to the USA and has attended only one game at the Stadium of Light this season, but rejects the suggestion he no longer cares what happens at the club.
He said: “I know it has been in the Press that I don’t care any more and I am not involved, but that is simply not true.
“That’s reporters guessing or making something up.
“I’m as involved as I have ever been.
“It is true that I am not at as many games, which is really a function of me being more involved in my business life and my family spending more time in the US.
“But I am watching, I am paying attention, and to answer the question that you sing at me during mainly the really bad games: yes, I’m watching. I’m a fan. I know how the fans feel. I know why they are not happy.
“It would be great if there was something I could say that would make everything better, but the reality is that is not going to be better until we do better on the pitch. “That’s the important thing.” Short has also underlined that he continues to plough his own money into the club, although he admits that as it is only covering losses caused by what he describes as “mistakes of the past”, his investment is not visible to fans in the same way as it would be if it was bankrolling new signings.
“I am involved financially,” he said.
“I put a significant amount of new capital into the club this summer.
“That didn’t go to buy new players, that went to cover losses relating to our mistakes of the past.”
Short says Sunderland’s shortterm goal must be to climb out of relegation danger, but in the medium to long term, he wants the club to return to the Premier League and believes it should be competing in the top half of that division.
“The first order of business is to get ourselves out of this problem, improve our performances, and move up the table,” he said. “After that, we need to continue to get stronger and get back into the Premier League as quickly as we can.
“This club, the size that it is, the fanbase that it has, belongs in the Premier League and that’s where we want to be.
“After that has happened, I will go back to my original goal was when we were in the Premier League, which is that we should be trying to finish in seventh place every season.
“There are six clubs with much higher revenue than ours – as a function of better sponsorship, much higher ticket prices, higher attendances – but we should be fighting for that seventh spot.
“In a good season, maybe sixth or fifth, in a bad season, 10th or 12th.
“Certainly not the kind of performance we have experienced in those last 10 years in the Premier League.
“That should be our long-term goal.
“To make that happen, I think the most important thing is that, going forward, we don’t repeat all the mistakes we made in the past of paying a lot of money for players which didn’t get us to where we wanted to be.” ELLIS Short says Sunderland is not ‘officially’ for sale – but has confirmed he is willing to entertain offers from any “legitimate” and “credible” potential buyer.
The Black Cats’ owner held talks with a consortium in the summer but that move broke down, and Short has hinted he pulled the plug because that proposed £80m sale would not have been in the best interests of the club and the fans would not have been “happy” had it gone ahead.
Short employed an advisor to help find a buyer for the club in the summer, but has since taken the club off the market – officially, at least.
“There is no longer an advisor,” he said. “The club is not officially for sale.
“If there is a legitimate buyer that I can have a direct phone conversation with, and it’s a credible person, like probably every other owner of an English football team, I’ll have a conversation.”
Of the summer negotiations with a German group, he added: “At that time I was entertaining offers to buy the club.
“I had hired an advisor to process that.
“I guess the first thing I should say is that everything that was written in the media about that was wrong, not really remotely resembling the truth other than one thing – there was one group we did have some advanced discussions with.
“I decided not to do that transaction and I have heard some criticism that because of the depth of emotion that I should be out, that possibly I should have done that.
“But that comes from people who don’t know anything about the circumstances of that transaction, don’t know anything about the circumstances of the buyer.
“I’ve got the interests of the club at heart and I am not going to do anything that is not good for the club.
“I do understand the fans want me out, but I am certain they would not have been happy with that transaction, and that’s why it didn’t get done.”
Interestingly, Short says whether he sells the club further down the line is “mostly” beyond his control.
He said: “What matters is what is happening on the pitch right now and where we are in the table, and what we have to do.
“I may or may not sell the club at some point in the future. That’s completely beyond my control – well not completely, but mostly beyond my control.
“But as long as I own it, I’m going to be focused on what is good for the club, and the immediate focus is getting ourselves out of the situation that we are in now.”