Ellis Short

View from the Avenue: ‘what must happen before I watch Sunderland again’

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Paul Summerside: staying away until a certain individual departs

 

Monsieur Salut writes: I detected little optimism in close season about our prospects for a quick return to the Premier League, Hope, yes, but we always suffer from that. I imagine you’d get pretty long odds just now on us recovering from a dismal start and getting back up. As things stand, there’s more chance of winning something playing live casino games than of the present bunch of players leading a determined charge on the top six, let alone the top two.

But we can probably all agree the start to the season has been rather more dismal than most of us expected. Pete Sixsmith’s second goal update from the Stadium of Light reported the start of the exodus vs Sheffield United. And now Paul Summerside, briefly optimistic about the Simon Grayson era, has returned to the sulky gloom he experienced as Sunderland wasted everyone’s time last season (the old Jeremy Robson joke – ‘shall we just fax the points to you and save us all the trouble of staging or attending a game?’- rang true week after week).

Paul has sparked a lively debate at the Salut! Sunderland Facebook group* on the correct response, as he sees it, to the terrible malaise afflicting our club. His is drastic …

 

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View from the Avenue: a sunnier Summerside outlook

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Paul Summerside calls for a back to basics approach even if it takes longer than a season to mount a serious promotion challenge

Paul Summerside was Mr Doom and Gloom last season – as, in our different ways, were most of the rest of us – and eventually went on strike, boycotting the Stadium of Light in protest at David Moyes still being in charge.

After one home draw against broadly similar underachievers, he/we will hardly be proclaiming the return of Good Times. But in a fascinating debate at Salut! Sunderland‘s Facebook pages – join the group* if you haven’t already – he made these cautiously upbeat points. The optimism depends on Simon Grayson getting the proceeds of the Jeremain Lens departure (UPDATE: on reflection a lot less sensible and lucrative than it appeared; just a loan with SAFC receiving only £1.4m – and more – to strengthen his side …

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Plan A’s disintegrated but at least Sunderland can move on to Plan B

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Paul Summerside sees reason and maybe even hope in the Grayson option

See club statement on Simon Grayson’s appointment as manager at this link

Paul Summerside went on strike last season, boycotting games because Sunderland were persisting with David Moyes. He senses a lot of underwhelmed reaction from supports to the approach to Simon Grayson but feels he is not only a potentially sound choice, but maybe the only one open to us …

Well it would seem Ellis Short’s Plan A to asset strip, lean down and sell on, in order to recoup the majority of his investment, is a non-starter.
Was it ever a starter?

Certainly not at £90 million.

Now to Plan B. Get the club stabilised and then promoted (in order to carry out plan A).

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As talks on selling Sunderland collapse, are things at last looking rosier?

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On sale now, June 29

So we have reached June 29, the retail launch of the new and controversial home kit (I still like the front, hate the back) and a time of the summer when all the big or ambitious clubs, and most of the ones that are neither, are well advanced in preparing for the coming season.

All except us. At least, that was the case until just now.

Talks on selling the club have collapsed, Ellis Short is staying as owner and moves are afoot to bring Simon Grayson from PNE as manager,

UPDATE:
See club statement on Simon Grayson’s appointment as manager at this link

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Already given up on SAFC promotion? Have your say in our poll

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[polldaddy poll=9771633]

Even before the lamentable SAFC club statement on the bleak farce of the supposed attempts to sign a manager, Pete Sixsmith had – with customary eloquence and gallows humour – captured the miserable state of affairs with his piece entitled “The comic opera that is SAFC just now“.

Then came the extraordinary statement announcing that Ellis Short’s business affairs, specifically his desire to sell the club, were holding up an appointment.

“Thanks for utterly wasting my time,” Derek McInnes must have been thinking.

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End of season reviews: (3) smilin’ like I’m happy, seeking extenuating circumstances

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John McCormick: We're not bottom, so is it a Happy Christmas?
John McCormick: been here before

Colin Randall writes: I commend this epic piece from our associate editor John McCormick, his superbly argued but also entertaining contribution to our series of end-of-season reviews ….

 

You might be telling people

“ it’s a chance to rebuild”.

You might be saying

“Now we can bring the young’ns through”

Or you might just be thinking

“at least we won’t have to watch that rubbish next season”.

And maybe you’re forcing a smile as you say it.

Recent events might even have made it a genuine smile. But are you really happy? How do you really feel?

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Sixer’s Soapbox: Moyes resigns, he won’t be missed

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John McCormick writes: end of season reviews have just begin, with Lars Knutsen providing the first with a piece entitled “Hire and fire”.  Some time in the next couple of weeks, depending on how many reviews there are, Pete Sixsmith will bring the season to a close.

But M Salut called on Pete to perform a duty first, and Pete stepped up to the mark in fine style. Here’s his take on the hiring, but perhaps not the firing, of a manager who promised so much and delivered nothing but dust:

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End of season reviews 2016-17 (1): ‘hire and fire’ is the Lars word

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Lars Knutsen touching base

STOP PRESS – Lars submitted this piece well before the season end, before the Arsenal game in fact. It has been sitting in the draft folder for a week and would you know it – within minutes of it going live Moyes resigns. MD

Malcolm Dawson, deputy editor, writes: at the end of a season that will linger long in the memory as one we would wish to forget, Salut! Sunderland approached both its regular and occasional contributors for their thoughts. Don’t be fooled by the name – Lars Knutsen is Mackem through and through and even though his work took him away from his Boldon roots to Cambridge via Scandinavia and the USA. he retains his love of SAFC. Working as he did in the pharmaceutical sector  you’d think he might have driven his troops into researching a cure for the compulsion to follow a club that has been a long term underachiever but no – like the rest of us he is stuck with his lot.

You can read more of Lars’s contributions here

Monsieur Salut adds: a series of painful steroid injections to a dodgy knee reminded me today it was time to launch this series of end-of-season reviews. With thanks to Malcolm for preparing Lars’s contribution for publication, let me make it clear the series is open to all Salut! Sunderland readers who have time and inclination to offer their own reviews of a season. Just let us know – leave a message below or use the contact link you’ll find somewhere on the home page

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