Well, it’s clarity we wanted and clarity we got. Perplexed at how Sunderland could manage to have so many incompetent owners in a row, the revelation that, actually, the ownership technically never changed has brought a sharp focus to the mystery as to why Sunderland continue to be so badly run.
Whilst not a huge surprise that the owners have, again, been a little misleading with fans, it is another crushing blow for a fan base reeling from yet another calamitous period in the ailing club’s history. Whilst the wording of the big fake-over announcement a year ago might have been clever. Clever enough to defend as not an outright lie, no one could claim that the intention was anything other than to deceive the fans. The intention was to mislead the fans into believing that there was a change in ownership, influence and decision-making and, worryingly, the new board member, Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, was complicit in this.
The new Director of Football/Head Coach model implemented for the current season got off to a slow start but did seem to represent a change in approach with good progress in the summer transfer window, bringing in young talented players from clubs higher up the pyramid in England and, eye-catchingly, Bayern Munich’s reserves.
However, January was a disaster. Sacking your manager a day before the transfer window closes, with no successor in place, and then taking two weeks, and two defeats, to secure your second choice is self-destructive even by Sunderland’s standards.
On the playing front, aiming for young talented players who, for whatever reason, have not quite made the breakthrough yet is not a bad strategy for a club in League One. However, we’ve been caught out by over emphasising latent talent and potential over current fitness and experience. Then bringing in older players who barely played all season to the cut and thrust of the last 15 games of League One is misjudged. Alex Neil’s damning assessment of his first 90 minutes – too many tired young players who’ve played too much and too many experienced pro’s who’ve played too little – must be awkward reading for Kristjaan Speakman, though an encouraging sign of the acumen of the new first team coach.
The pursuit of Defoe and Keane both seem romantic folly; fine for the fans to engage in such rose-tinted nostalgia but the club owners surely need to exert a more business-like shrewdness in their operating. Defoe is 39 and has played 17 minutes of first team football this season. Keane has not managed for a decade and I doubt he will again (too comfy that pundits chair and guffawing with Micah). Neither of them is the answer.
In light of the news that Donald, Sartori and Methven collectively hold more shares than KLD, the question is not why Keane turned down the return to SAFC but why Neil didn’t? An opaque structure, mistrust from the fans and an ownership demonstrably incapable of getting Sunderland AFC out of League One (four years and counting). You do wonder quite why Neil agreed to it?
A bigger question perhaps is, why are Donald, Sartori and Methven still here? Five years ago, they would have to Google ‘Sunderland Stadium of Light’ to find us, so they aint here for romance, nostalgia and the beautiful game. Which leaves three possible reasons, money, power and ego.
On the first of these, I’m no accountant and others have, and continue to, cover the finances and legalities far better than I can. Despite taking the parachute payments to buy the club they may well still have lost money in Sunderland AFC and perhaps they are unwilling to leave until they’ve got some pay back? Perhaps they still believe that one day we will get promoted and they’ll get a much bigger payday?
Along with money, vanity and ego seem important too. When they first arrived, they loved the limelight, courted attention, romanced the fans with ‘honest’, straight-talking podcast appearances, raucous away days, in with the fans, trips to Wembley and plastic pots of lager in the sunshine. Believing you are the reason for those heady days must be highly seductive and, you imagine, difficult to recreate on a team building day with an insurance company. That might explain why they came but not why they’re still here. Those days are long gone and none of the three amigos would find much bonhomie outside of away day director’s boxes now.
I suspect they can’t quite believe they’ve made such a mess of it all. Surely it is someone else’s fault? Businessmen successful in one area of life and then an utter disaster in running football clubs are too numerous to mention. The arrogance of Methven deriding northerners and specifically, bizarrely, his own fans as clueless about business was a fine illustration of their arrogance and contempt for fans.
The post-revelation comms about Donald and Methven now just altruistically ploughing money into the club with no involvement whatsoever in club decisions, like some modern-day Robert Tressell characters (The Salmon Trousered Philanthropists?) seems like more spin.
So, what happens next? There seems like 3 options:
Maintaining the status quo: everyone retains their current shares.
KLD buys out Donald and Methven (Sartori presumably would stay).
Someone new buys the club.
The third option seems highly unlikely. The conclusion of the current season may impact on whether the first or second option occur. If we head into our fifth season in League One, as currently seems the most likely outcome, maybe Donald and Methven will make good on their promise to sell up to KLD and walk away.
You could also imagine KLD wanting full control (he can afford it) to see if he can achieve something on his own. If we somehow manage a successful play-off campaign, we’re due one, then the sniff of Premier League money wafting that bit closer may prove too tempting for Donald and Methven to cut their ties.
