For young Irish kids some of the risk of settling on an English side to support has been removed in recent years by the continued dominance of a handful of clubs. The slightly random nature of the process routinely threw up allegiances that would require lengthy explanations just a few years later. The way things are going nobody, even in 20 years time, is going to have to have it explained to them why some middle aged bloke came to support any of the current top six.
It’s a pity really; it all used to make for some entertaining yarns, many tinged with a mix of sadness and defiant pride at the consequences of a chance encounter or sometimes obscure family connection.
Amid all of the randomness and irrationality, though, Sunderland circa 2007 seemed an obvious enough pick from an Irish perspective. It’s not clear how many kids might have been sucked into making some greater level of emotional commitment but the effect that the combination of Irish owners, Roy Keane as manager and a fair few players from these parts had was pretty easy to detect.
It seems funnier to recall now than it probably was at the time but when a bunch of Irish journalists travelled to Sunderland back in August 2006 for the unveiling of Keane, the joke – as we waited in the carpark of a local hotel for taxis – was that we should get out various papers to club together and buy an apartment over there, so often would we be visiting. Fortunately, it was one the few property related ideas had by an Irish person back around then that nobody bothered to pursue.
The flat, no doubt, would have been moved on at a loss long ago, like quite a few of the squad assembled by Keane. Having gained promotion to the Premier League under the Corkman the club managed to survive in the top flight for a decade which, had they known it would happen in advance, might have allowed those in charge to build its position. Thing don’t work that way, of course.
Instead, there were only a couple of years really under Steve Bruce when things threatened to move substantially towards longer term security and the sense of stability it might have brought. After a poor start to the 2011/12 season, Martin O’Neill was appointed and Sunderland have not finished a season since with the same manager who was in charge when it started.
The result has been fairly predictable with players purchased by a previous incumbent shunted aside in favour of new arrivals who quickly come to sense that the manager who bought them will be on his way soon. Sunderland effectively survived on the basis of the bounce achieved when a new man was appointed with the club staying up by five points or fewer for four straight seasons while the likes of Gus Poyet, Dick Advocaat and Sam Allardyce were sacked, resigned or moved on to manage England.
O’Neill clearly still feels aggrieved at having been replaced with Paolo Di Canio but few of those who passed through the job could have made much of a case for any impact they made. None comes out any worse really than David Moyes who seemed intent first and foremost on limiting the damage done to his own reputation from being associated with a disaster that he seemed completely incapable of preventing.
One he inherited that gets a lot of attention these days is Jack Rodwell, signed by Poyet for around £10 million in August 2014 and who has become something of a poster boy for the problems at the club. The 27 year-old has been earning just about €80,000 a week since then but rarely playing. Injuries were initially the problem but the midfielder has since been marginalised in the hope, it seems, that he would simply leave. Some chance.
The local paper calculated not long too ago that he has cost more than €5,000 for every minute he has actually been on the pitch and over €300,000 per first team appearance. He is not the only disaster story, though, with one locally based reporter characterising the squad as including a lot of “bad players on good contracts”.
Having done well on a tight budget at Preston, Simon Grayson was appointed at the start of the season but those who witnessed his tenure at close hand suggest the scale of the task at Sunderland seemed utterly beyond him. Quite why Chris Coleman accepted the role remains a mystery – he would surely see it as having been a terrible mistake after having been sacked this week. There was a fairly widespread feeling that the club should stick with and back him, as Blackburn had done with Tony Mowbray, in the hope of a similar outcome but then the Welshman did not make an entirely compelling case for himself with just five wins not nearly enough to avoid the club’s second straight relegation.
Ellis Short, inevitably, has to take a good deal of the blame for what has gone on. He did not sign the players but he did appoint the managers who did or, at the very least, the people who appointed them. In the end he deserves some credit for his decision to clear more than £100 million of debt so as to facilitate a takeover fronted by Stewart Donald.
The new man does not have anything close to Short’s wealth but he possesses enough to have put £11 million plus into non-league Eastleigh where here he seems bound to have picked up a greater grounding in football than his American predecessor possessed when he bought Drumaville out a decade ago.
Niall Quinn spoke highly of the American back then although he might, one suspects, have been a tiny bit squeamish about the billionaire’s business of buying up distressed assets. Short leaves, he says, as a fan who looks forward to returning to see the club play in better times.
Unlike Quinn he never gave the impression of having appreciated that what he had bought was more than a business, or even a club, but rather a slice of the soul of a city that has had so many of the other things it once took pride in taken away in recent decades.
The supporters will hope for better from the new owners although they too are outsiders and there are certainly no guarantees.
Meanwhile, with John O’Shea’s contract just about up, one of the few remaining Irish connections may be about to be severed although that too is uncertain and there is even talk of Mick McCarthy being brought back in.
If not, there will be a few Irish over the coming years who stick with it and join the locals in actively hoping for a revival. It would be sad if it doesn’t come to pass and, in 20 years time, they are explaining their strange loyalties but either way Ireland’s little love affair with the Stadium of Light looks to be over for now.
