EPL Talk » Ellis Short

Can Wigan Afford To Lose Steve Bruce?

Paul Bestall — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:35:32 +0000

When I heard that Steve Bruce was being lined up as the replacement for Ricky Sbragia, a few alarm bells rang in my head. Bruce, being a Newcastle United fan surely couldn’t be Ellis Short and Niall Quinn’s choice as the new Sunderland manager could he? Would Bruce seriously consider near enough ruling himself out of becoming Newcastle manager in the near future by taking the job? How much would Wigan want for a man they paid £3 million for?

Yet, amazingly, it seems as if Bruce has said yes to becoming the new manager at the Stadium of Light after an all day meeting in the Algarve. Short has made no secret of his plans to pump money into Sunderland and Bruce has seemed frustrated in the last few weeks with his sides perceived lack of effort once they’d passed the magic 40 point mark in the Premiership. After the defeat to Stoke City on May 18th, Bruce let go with his frustrations about his players lack of effort and the fact that what could have been.

Losing 3 top players in the last transfer window didn’t help and with rumours flying around about the future of Antonio Valencia, Bruce may have thought he’d had enough of life in Wigan in his second spell with the Latics. There’s no doubt that Bruce is keen to push himself with the challenge of a bigger club, and looking at his career, Sunderland will be the biggest position he’s held since being the manager of Sheffield United. He’s got an ambitious chairman, a squad of underperforming players but the additional carrot of plenty of money to spend in the summer.

Bruce is attempting to follow in the footsteps of a Sunderland legend with his affection towards Newcastle United. Bob Stokoe, the Black Cats manager between 1972 and 1976, is feted by the Mackems for the 1973 FA Cup win and winning promotion to the old First Division in 1976. If he can impose himself early on at Sunderland, it may end up being the most successful spell that Sunderland fans have had in a long time, Peter Reid’s reign excepted.

For the Wigan Athletic Chairman, Dave Whelan, now it looks as if Bruce on the way to Sunderland, needs to avoid the mistake he made once Paul Jewell resigned. By allowing Chris Hutchings to take over as manager, it almost cost the Latics their Premiership status, until Bruce rode to the rescue. Ordinarily, you’d say the obvious choice would be Roberto Martinez, currently winning plaudits with Swansea City and the expansive way they play football.

As the club that fetched Martinez to England originally as one of the “Three Amigos” in 1995, Wigan obviously are close to his heart. The news that Celtic have made an approach for Martinez will have depressed the usually irrepressible Dave Whelan who would have had the Spaniard at the top of his wish list. Martinez may yet turn the opportunity down, but Celtic is a massive job, with European football every season added to the continual battle with Rangers to win trophies. Is it too big a job to turn down, regardless of his emotional attachment to Wigan Athletic?

Whelan needs to make sure the mistakes of 2007 are not repeated but to lose such an excellent manager and potentially his readymade replacement is dreadful luck. His next managerial appointment will be the most important decision that Whelan will make this year. He has to get it right, but he needs a proven Premiership manager or the rising star of the Championship. Candidates like that aren’t exactly are growing on trees and Whelan needs to give the Latics fans reasons for optimism this summer.

Sunderland Need To Move Quickly But Realistically

Paul Bestall — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:12:29 +0000

The only thing that surprised me about Ricky Sbragia’s resignation was the timing of it, coming just 20 or 30 minutes after the final whistle. It was odd to watch Niall Quinn speaking about his manager not wanting to take up the option of another year as manager, whilst Sbragia stood there impassively.

Now it seems that the man who dared to question Roy Keane’s scattergun approach to transfer policy, correctly in my opinion, Ellis Short, is finalising his deal to buy out the board and complete his takeover at the Stadium of Light. A transfer kitty of £200 million will then apparently be made available to whoever takes the hot seat over which just makes me throw my hands up in exasperation.

60 years ago, Sunderland were known as the “Bank of England” due to their wealth but times have moved on and once again we’re faced with another club who seem to have no realisation of where they are in the scheme of things. The names being mentioned with the vacancy go from the ludicrous, Frank Rijkaard, to the obvious, Alan Curbishley, to the stupid, Steve Bruce being a Newcastle fan. The number one target, Martin Jol looks set for his dream job as Ajax manager; can Sunderland honestly think they can match Ajax in terms of appeal?

Now I’ve nothing against Sunderland wanting to better themselves but once again this is a club that the new owner assumes that just because it’s in the Premiership, everyone will be queuing up to join them. No offence to Sunderland fans but Short must be living in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks that they can attract the quality of players or a top quality manager he seems to think will want to join them.

Despite the amounts of money washing around in the Premiership, to attract the top players you either need to be based in London, or an internationally known club such as Liverpool or Manchester United. Sunderland are neither at the present moment and Short needs to look at how tough Manchester City are finding it to attract the big name players they assumed would be desperate to join them. Regardless of what a lot of people think, the top players want to win trophies, with money being a distant second.

You can have all the money in the world, but as in Sunderland’s case, you have no real international presence or modern history, you will struggle to improve the player quality with signings from abroad. Look at Newcastle in their pomp or Leeds United when they were going well, which top quality international stars did they sign? None. Not one, because of geographical location and history of success.

They may have signed some great players, but not one of true top level international quality. Ginola was a swear word in France by the time he joined Newcastle after being blamed for the goal that cost France qualification to USA 94. Faustino Asprilla was a loose cannon, unable to fit in anywhere, a risk too far for many managers.

With Short trying to throw money at Sunderland, he may be very surprised of the actual lack of interest from a top quality manager to join him. With several massive clubs in Europe needing new managers, Juventus, Munich, Real Madrid, Ajax, PSG, Chelsea, Celtic and German champions Wolfsburg to name a few, he’ll realise that money isn’t everything in Premiership football. Can Sunderland honestly compete with those sides, regardless of the money the may have?

Even in England, they only have to look up the road to Newcastle United to see the type of player having loads of money can give you. Inconsistent, infuriating and unwanted else where, the perception of the last few years in the UK was that if a player went to Newcastle, it was purely for the money as they had no chance of any silverware.

Short needs to be realistic at Sunderland and grow them steadily, otherwise he could end up with a frustrating summer and team full of mercenary players. Once again, a quick glance up the road will tell them all they need to know about that policy.

Sbragia QUITS – Breaking News

Christopher Walker — Sun, 24 May 2009 17:27:50 +0000

Ricky Sbragia has left his post as manager of Sunderland.

It has been announced after Sunderland’s home defeat to Chelsea, Ricky Sbragia has stepped down -despite avoiding relegation.

Sbragia initially took over at the Stadium Of Light in December as caretaker manager in the wake of Roy Keane’s departure. Following a 1-0 defeat to Manchester United, Sbragia went on to take seven points from the next three games – sticking four goals past West Brom and Hull respectively. After pressure from his players and fans alike Sbragia was appointed manager of Sunderland on an 18 month contract. Sunderland were promptly beaten 3-0 by Everton in his first game as manager.

Since his full time appointment, Sunderland have mustered a poor 14 points from 19 games – which is what led the club to fighting for their lives on the final day. I always felt that Sbragia was reluctant to take the job and appeared to have been pressured into it. During his caretaker spell he was always very coy about taking the job on full time and this was demonstrated in his post-match interiew after the victory at Hull. While providing his post-match reaction for British televeision one of his players is clearly heard shouting: ’give him the job’ – the Scot not only looked embarrassed, he looked uneasy. However, that could merely be my interpretation of events.

Todays announcement following the match came as no real surprise to me, and one assumes that the board if not the players were fully aware this was to be the former defender’s last game at the helm. Rumours of a full-take over by American investor Ellis Short have been rife over the last 24 hours and that the Short wanted his own man in charge. With that in mind a thought creeps in that maybe Sbragia didn’t jump, he was pushed - a day before his 53rd birthday.

The next seven days could big ones on Wierside as we await clarification as to how accurate the rumours of Short’s buyout of the club are. Once we have an idea of the shape of things at boardroom level at the club we might be able to profile the kind of man likley to take up reigns at the Stadium Of Light. That being said, there might be a new man in charge within the next few days anyhow.

Martin Jol and Steve Mclaren are already being linked to the Black Cats job but you would feel that Mclaren would be a somewhat unpopular choice. I have a strange feeling in my stomach (hopefully it isn’t something I have eaten!) that if the buyout rumours are true, even Niall Quinn may be a candidate for the job – particularly if Short wants someone he knows and trusts in charge.

As I update this post, Sbragia has since been quoted as saying the following:

“I spoke with chairman Niall Quinn this week and I think we need a bigger name to carry the club further. I’ve done everything I came to, I’ve kept the club in the Premier League. I would like to have done it better but I’m pleased we stayed up.”

The club have also released their own statement in the last hour, to read it please click here: http://www.safc.com/news/sunderland-afc-statement.html

Who Is Ellis Short?

The Gaffer — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:57:49 +0000

The number of Premier League clubs owned by Americans became four this week after Dallas-based businessman Ellis Short acquired controlling interest in Sunderland.

Short now owns the largest single stake of Sunderland at more than 30 per cent, and gives him effective control of the northeast club. He joins fellow Americans Malcolm Glazer, Randy Lerner, Tom Hicks and George Gillett as owners of Premier League clubs.

So what is known about Ellis Short? Here’s his fact sheet:

Grew up in Independence, Missouri.

He began his career at General Electric before teaming up with business partner John Grayken at Lone Star Funds, a private equity firm based in Dallas, Texas. At Lone Star Funds, he was the senior executive who ran the Asian operations of Lone Star Funds.

Subject of an arrest warrant in 2003 by the South Korean authorities in relation to the purchase of Korea Exchange Bank, but the charges were dropped.

He has subsequently retired from Lone Star Funds.

In 2003, he bought Skibo Castle, which now operates as a members-only hotel and country club in Scotland. The castle is famous for hosting Madonna’s wedding to Guy Ritchie in 2000.

Ellis Short and his wife are very private individuals, but one scandal of note happened last year when Mrs Short allegedly threatened to shoot a retired couple’s dogs because they were walking across the Skibo Castle Estate. In Scottish law, there’s no law of trespass.