A club on the brink of disaster
A CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP IS THE ONLY WAY SUNDERLAND CAN BE REJUVENATED
SUNDERLAND AFC and its owner Ellis Short are locked in a death spiral.
With debts of £110m and losses running at more than £30m per season, the club is effectively on life support - dependent on Short to write cheques to fund the deficit.
Meanwhile, aside from making up that shortfall, the American - scarred by the way many tens of millions of pounds of his money was frittered away by the previous regime on Wearside - refuses to throw good money after bad and is desperate to find a buyer.
A sale is the only way forward for the club and the only way out for Short.
The problem is finding someone who is prepared to pay Short’s asking price, to guarantee the debts, to continue funding the losses and who also has the resources to invest money in the team.
Short could not find a taker when the club was in the Premier League, nor now in the Championship - so what chance does he stand if the club slips into League One?
Yet that is the danger which lies ahead.
Following relegation last season, like the vast majority of Sunderland fans I did not expect promotion this season.
I did not even expect the Black Cats to be in contention for the playoffs come the business end of the campaign. Nor did I expect the club to find itself fighting relegation once more - and certainly not to find itself staring into the abyss with twothirds of the season gone.
Sunderland’s decline has been dramatic and at this stage of proceedings only a fool would rule out a double-dip relegation.
The prospect of this club kicking off a season in the third tier for only the second time in its 139-year history - the previous occasion being the 1987-88 campaign - casts a dark shadow over Wearside.
Not for more than 20 years has Sunderland found itself facing such a threat, when Peter Reid arrived in the nick of time to steer the club to safety.
In fact, the circumstances in which the club finds itself today are far more serious.
Because back in 1995, when Reid rode into town, the club was owned by Bob Murray who, whatever mistakes he may have made during his 20-year stewardship, is a local businessman made good, a passionate Sunderland fan and the man who went on to equip the club for the future by building the Stadium of Light to replace the decaying Roker Parkand a state-ofthe-art training ground to replace the dilapidated Charlie Hurley Centre. Under Short, there is no vision for the future - and in fact the club has regressed at an alarming rate. Financier Short’s multi-billion dollar fortune dwarfs that of Murray but he is an absentee owner who has upped sticks and left London to return to his native USA. He has become disillusioned and disenchanted with Sunderland, has not attended a game at the Stadium of Light since August, wants to get out and has essentially washed his hands of its day-to-day running and left that problem to chief executive Martin Bain. The club is living hand-tomouth. Hence the fact then-boss Simon Grayson was handed a pitiful £1.25m to spend last summer. Even that paltry sum must seem like untold riches to Grayson’s successor Chris Coleman, who was not given so much as a single penny to strengthen his team in the January window and had to make-do-and-mend with four loan signings and a free transfer - and had to ship Didier Ndong out on loan even to finance those deals.
As with so many football club owners these days, Short is completely unaccountable.
He does not have to speak to the media and he hardly ever does so.
During his nine-and-a-half year reign he has made just three tightlycontrolled appearances in front of the cameras for the club’s own official website, one appearance on BBC Radio Newcastle and a brief word with Sky Sports ahead of the Capital One Cup final in 2014.
The most recent of those rare public appearances was a club website interview in November when - along with explaining the decision to sack Grayson and speaking about last summer’s failed takeover talks Short insisted he is a fan, admitted Sunderland is in crisis and declared he has the ‘interests of the club at heart.’
Yet given the club’s plight, and his refusal to give Coleman even a sporting chance of avoiding relegation by backing him in the transfer market last month, it is impossible to reconcile those words with his actions.
The truth is when Sunderland and Short eventually disentangle themselves, and the ‘under new ownership’ signs go up at the Stadium of Light, there will be celebrations on both sides of the Atlantic.